My Harry Academia
by Raolin
Summary: Cast adrift and forgotten, what happens when a 15-year-old Harry Potter who's lost his powers meets All Might, the world's greatest hero, who happens to be looking for a successor? Some Plus Ultra shenanigans, that's what. Featuring Harry with newfound powers attending UA High, because that worked so well for Hogwarts, right? Slightly different cast of classmates, and Harry/multi.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter ****1**** – ****Harry invades Japan**

…

What does it mean to be a hero?

This was a question the world had been asking since time immemorial, ever since the first caveman slapped paint on a wall and began to tell the first story. However, this question had gained quite a bit more traction in the world's collective consciousness since the arrival of quirks.

The first report came from Qing Qing City, where a child was born that radiated light. However, this supernatural phenomenon did not remain isolated for long. Soon, the entire world began to witness a collective awakening of superhuman abilities across its entire population. Before long, what had once been considered extraordinary became simply ordinary, with 80% of the world possessing some form of supernatural ability.

Unfortunately, with this new wave of power came pure chaos. Criminals suddenly stood immune to the law, the old systems unable to cope with this newly superhuman society.

And so heroes stepped in to meet this new challenge.

Today, the question of what made a hero was no longer just a matter of abstract wondering, but one of practical importance. The profession of hero had long since overtaken movie-star and famous musician as the number one dream of children everywhere. And as the streets flooded with professional heroes, it seemed like more than a few of those children got their wish.

As this flood of heroes continued to swell, the world began to face this question with greater and greater urgency. What does it mean to be a hero? Is it having more power than most? Is it saving lives and stopping crimes? Is it being compassionate, and self-sacrificing? And does it matter if someone becomes a hero for the riches and glory as long as they save lives, or must a hero be humble and selfless to be truly worthy of the name? These questions continued to circle through society's consciousness as people reveled and worried over this fantastical world they had become a part of.

In the mind of the so-called "Number One Hero," however, these questions were of even more immediate importance, tinged as they currently were with self-loathing and regret.

_I'm a pathetic fraud_, the man thought bitterly, his skeletally thin hand clutching his side in pain and despair as he looked on uselessly from a crowd of bystanders standing at the mouth of a dingy alley in Musutafu, Japan. Before them, the flame-riddled alley was suddenly wracked with yet another riot of explosions and even louder howls of desperate rage. At the center of this chaos, a towering mass of dark, green-black slime coiled, a monstrous grin on its mockery of a face as massive tendrils of its fluid body snaked and whipped through the air in manic pleasure and self-assured victory.

Nearly buried within that horrific mass was a sweat-stained mat of spiky blonde hair, and barely visible below them was a pair of crimson eyes bulging with both horror and rage.

Those eyes belonged to a teenager currently being swallowed up by the ghastly body of the slime villain. But, now matter how the child raged and fought with an almost mindless fury, creating a cascade of explosions quick as gunfire from hands now buried inside the villain's body, the monster's body crept inexorably forward, threatening to subsume the last of the teen's screaming face.

And all the while, the hero known to the world as All Might, the Symbol of Peace and greatest hero in history, remained hidden in the crowd of horrified onlookers, totally anonymous and utterly impotent.

_I'm worthless_! he condemned, clutching more fiercely at the now long-familiar crippling injury hidden beneath his shirt, and ignoring the waves of agony shooting through his body as a result. _What kind of hero can only use his powers for three hours a day?_ He grimaced in self-loathing. _And what kind of Symbol of Peace stands by and watches as a child dies because he's already used up his time limit for the day?_

A feeble blue light glared out from deep inside the shadows of the man's bruised, sunken eyes, little more than a mockery of the unparalleled power that once shone from those gleaming irises.

At the moment, though, those eyes rested on what he considered to be the true heroes in this alleyway.

Unfortunately, they … weren't exactly doing all that well themselves, to be honest.

"Fire and wood don't exactly make a good combination!" the rising hero Kamui Woods yelped out in more than a little panic, which was fair, given how the riot of explosions had left fires burning throughout the alley that his body, apparently made out of some type of elastic wood, likely wouldn't respond well to. Fluidly extending his arms, Kamui wrapped up the final stragglers in the alley and pelted for the exit. "One of you will have to stop this guy!" he yelled to the remaining heroes as he hastily cleared the mouth of the alley.

"Don't look at me! I've got my hands full here!" the rescue-specialist Backdraft shouted in response. Wearing a costume like a modified firefighter's outfit, the hydrokinetic was living up to his appearance, firing streams of water from the nozzles at the end of his arms to combat the fires raging through the buildings on either side of the alley.

Battling a rising anxiety at the increasingly hopeless situation, and his own powerlessness to help, the gaunt figure in the crowd only half-noticed as a black-haired teen clutching a shopping bag joined the crowd of onlookers, immediately snaking his way to the front of the muttering press of people.

"This is no good! I can't get a grip on his weird body!" another of the heroes in the alley cried, this one known to the world as Death Arms, a hero with incredible strength. However, this strength seemed utterly useless when faced with a villain such as this, given the creature's fluid, shifting body. Cackling smugly, that villain formed a massive hand out his dark, sludge-like body and swung it the hulking hero, who could do little else but desperately throw himself backwards to avoid it as the pavement in front of him erupted from the force of the blow.

All the while, the teen trapped inside the body of the villain continued to scream and fight, snarling with almost feral rage as explosions continued to wrack the villain's body. Unfortunately, as powerful as the teen's quirk was, it seemed to do little to affect the sludge villain's oozing, greenish-black body. It did, however, make the gathered heroes even more hesitant to approach the pair for fear of being blown away.

"It's no good! None of us have the right quirks to stop a villain like this!" Death Arms shouted in frustration, desperately dodging another of the villain's amorphous swings. The monster's bulging yellow eyes gleamed with smug triumph upon hearing this declaration, knowing just how true it was.

"We'll just have to do damage control until someone with the right powers shows up!" another of the heroes yelled reluctantly. "The kid will just have to hang on a little while longer!"

At these words, the gaunt, useless bystander in the crowd gave a strangled groan of despair, his heart flooding with self-loathing at how utterly worthless he was here.

_You're a disgrace, All Might!_ he practically screamed at himself. _You're not a real hero!_

However, as the professional heroes all stepped back, clearly hating themselves for it, but still seeing no alternative but to stand by and wait for reinforcements, someone else had enough.

Without skipping a beat, the black-haired teen tore free of the crown and leaped into the fray.

* * *

_Dammit, Harry! This is such a bad idea!_

However, no matter how the teen yelled at himself, it was still the only idea he had. So …

"Hey! Water Boy!" the black-haired teen yelled, ignoring the horrified looks on the heroes' faces as he ran full pelt towards the living pile of goo, and the teen still trapped inside it. "I want you to douse that bastard with everything you've got!"

"What are you doing?! Get out of there! We're pros! We'll handle it!" the firefighter-looking hero yelled, panicked at seeing a kid stepping into a fight that even pros found themselves helpless in.

"I don't care if you're the bloody pope! Just douse the guy and don't let up!" Harry shouted, nimbly ducking out of the way of Death Arms' desperate grab as he continued to charge straight at the villain.

This move would be considered less than wise by most. And Harry wouldn't exactly be inclined to disagree with them, either. But he didn't stop, even when the bulging yellow eyes of the monster fell upon him.

"Ah, a wannabe hero, huh?" the villain goaded, a warbling, gargling voice sounding from behind massive, craggy teeth that split the face-like mass in a twisted parody of amusement and contempt. "Well, I've already got one skin-suit I'm working on! I don't really need another!"

As the villain raised a massive, arm-like tendril high overhead, the shadows moved enough for the still-burning fires to cast a ruddy light on the face of the victim still half-buried in its murky body. Those crimson eyes still burned with fury and fear, but as they fell on Harry, they widened in shock and confusion.

"Good night, kid!" the monster yelled, bringing its arm-like mass down in a crushing overhead strike.

As the dust cleared, however, it revealed an untouched teen standing next to an empty crater.

"I think you missed," he goaded the villain without thinking.

As the monster's bulging yellow eyes tightened in anger, the teen quietly groaned to himself.

_Good job. Irritating the bad guy is clearly a smart move here_, he self-criticized. Unfortunately, he didn't have time for more reflection, as the sludge villain began winding up for another attack.

Once again, that giant, amorphous limb crashed into the pavement with monstrous force, crushing the asphalt and sending debris flying. And also once again, the dust cleared to reveal the teen's untouched form crouched beside the new crater.

"How we coming on that water?!" Harry yelled back to the heroes just standing around watching in shock.

"Oh, uh, right!" the rescue hero responded, stepping away from the now mostly contained fires and taking aim at the villain, so taken aback at what he was seeing that he found himself falling in line with the kid's plan almost without realizing.

Harry couldn't afford to pay him much mind, though. From all the snarling and glaring coming from the monster in front of him, he was starting to suspect that the villain was becoming somewhat cross with him, and given the countless dark, looping tendrils now waving in the air, he was clearly through playing around, too.

_I swear to God, if I make it through this, I will never curse Oliver Wood's name ever again_, Harry desperately bargained as he prepared to make damn good use of every last ounce of the quidditch training obsessively drilled into him over long, _long _hours by his fanatical former captain.

From behind him, several streams of water began arcing overhead to lightly crash against the sludge villain's slimy body, but neither Harry nor the villain paid this any attention. For the villain, his focus was purely on crushing this annoying little pest, while for Harry, his focus was solely on staying alive.

_This is fine! I've totally got this!_ he thought with only mild panic as he ducked one massive whipping tendril only to dance out of the way of another. _They're just bludgers!_ His quick, seeker's eyes tracked the veritable thicket of tendrils as he continued his desperate maneuvers, jumping and rolling and diving and sidestepping with lightning-fast reflexes and panic-fueled adrenaline. _They're just massive, slimy, foul-smelling bludgers!_ he continued to try and psych himself up, only to pause as a thought occurred to him. _It's just like dodging Marcus Flint!_

From that point on, the ringing crashes and frustrated roars of the villain were undercut with amused laughter as the suddenly more relaxed teen remembered his long-standing experience dodging the great ugly troll on a broom that was the Slytherin team captain, and found confidence in the deeply ingrained reflexes he had developed as a result.

However, this newfound confidence didn't last for long. While he may not have known why he was told to do it, the rescue-hero Backdraft was thankfully continuing to fire heavy streams of water at the body of the sludge villain. Unfortunately, as he did, the monster's fluid body continuously absorbed all that water, making the villain steadily grow larger.

And larger.

"Don't let up!" Harry yelled, practically feeling the growing uncertainty from the heroes behind him, even as he himself began making more and more desperate maneuvers to avoid the massive, watery limbs, not even his wealth of experience dodging bludgers from the Weasley twins helping him much at this point due to their size.

"This is only making things worse!" Backdraft shouted, watching as the villain's body continued to swell and grow, much to the villain's own manic delight.

"He's right, kid!" the villain gloated in its warbling voice, swatting at the nimble teen with utterly gigantic limbs, forcing the teen's reflexes into overdrive in a desperate attempt to stay alive for just a few seconds longer. "You may be quick, but _this_ is your plan? You're going to beat me by making me bigger?" Broken pieces of asphalt tore through the kid's shirt as he only barely avoided one of the now practically colossal tendrils when it slammed into the ground an inch from him, sending small shards of crushed pavement flying and causing faint red patches of blood to blossom on the teen's ragged garment.

However, even as the teen staggered, a smile spread across his face, making the villain pause in confusion and uncertainty.

"Oh, I'm not the one who's going to beat you," he told the monster, sweat dripping down his grinning face. "I'm just the distraction."

The stunned silence that gripped the alleyway was abruptly shattered by a bellow of herculean effort as the blonde teen finally broke free of the villain's now pale, watery green body.

"What? Impossible! I had you!" the villain cried, bulging eyes widening in confusion and alarm.

"That water isn't just making you bigger," an exhausted but triumphant Harry explained with a grin. "It's _diluting_ you." He made eye contact with the panting former hostage. "And you can't hold your body together all that well when it's been thinned out like this, can you? Which means you're _vulnerable_."

The blonde teen's crimson irises gleamed with sudden understanding before darkening with bloodthirsty rage.

The sudden roar of fury came from the villain, however, as one of its colossal, watery green limbs finally made contact with its target, crashing into the black-haired teen and slamming him against a wall with a pained shout.

"DAMN YOU, KID!" the villain shouted, raising another limb to finish him off.

"_Do it!_" Harry yelled, ignoring the crackling pain shooting through his body as he turned to the teen with the explosive quirk.

The enraged former hostage, however, needed no encouragement.

"_GO TO HEEEEELLLLLL!_"

The avalanche of explosions coming from the teen's palms were like nothing before, bombarding the villain's watery, weakened body with a merciless, savage fury, the monster's screams drowned out by the thunder of fiery explosions, and the furious bellows of the teen creating them.

The onlookers at the entrance to the alley shouted in alarm as the alley shook and burned with waves of heat from the almost sun-like explosions, but the teen didn't let up, even as the villain's watered-down body began boiling away to steam.

By the time they finally stopped, the silence in the smoke-filled alley was absolute, broken only by the heaving, panting breaths coming from the blonde teen, and the quiet sizzle of the last, small remnants of the sludge villain's body, now little more than a tiny greenish puddle with closed eyes.

Into that silence, however, wild cheers soon erupted.

Harry almost jumped in alarm upon hearing them, but he was frankly too tired, slumped as he was against the ruined wall cradling his aching ribs.

The next few minutes passed as a blur to him. He was idly aware of people rushing into the alley to help both of them up. He also distantly registered the feel of crimson eyes silently boring into him as his fellow teen was checked over by the heroes. He also faintly noticed his own stubborn refusal to let the heroes bustle him over to a nearby ambulance too.

Frankly, he didn't much care for hospitals and the like.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to completely tune out the heroes' scolding.

"What were you thinking?! You could have been killed! You had no business getting involved!"

"You really should have left things up to us pros! But … even so, that was some seriously impressive work out there! Man, I wish I had your reflexes!"

"Civilians shouldn't get involved in fights against villains. That's what training and hero licenses are for. You could've gotten yourself and the hostage killed. But still, decent job, kid. With some proper training, I'd say you've got the makings of a decent pro in you."

He also noticed the far more one-sided praises being heaped upon Angry McBlasterson.

"Man, you're tough, kid!"

"Wow, that quirk of yours is something else!"

"Hey, when you go pro, make sure to head over to my agency! I'd love for you to be my sidekick!"

Through it all, however, the spiky-haired blonde never made a sound, simply staring almost sullenly at the ground.

Eventually, however, the press started swarming the alley as well, and they of course weren't going to accept taciturn silence as a valid response.

Unfortunately for them, however, the arrival of what Harry practically considered to be his natural-born nemeses gave a second wind to the exhausted teen, and he forced his shaky legs under him and began slowly heading for the opposite end of the alley, gently shrugging off the almost mother-hen-like hands of the pro heroes in the process.

Of course, the press wasn't just going to let a story walk away without a fight, though.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Have you had any training?"

"What drives a normal kid to jump into the middle of a fight against a villain?"

Harry's brow furrowed as he pondered that last question, even as he increasingly tuned out all the others.

A normal kid … did that really apply to him?

_Could_ it?

What does it mean to be normal? Is it being no more powerful than anyone else? Is it standing by and trusting that someone else will take care of whatever evil things are happening around you? Is it focusing only on your own life, and not others', even when someone is in danger? Is it not making any waves, and never standing out from the crowd around you, even if that crowd is standing still, and your soul is screaming that you need to move? That you need to _do_ something, even if it puts yourself in danger, and makes you stand out?

Can you be normal and still be a good person, if being normal means doing nothing when you have the chance to help someone in need?

Unfortunately, the mob of reporters still hounding him eventually forced him out of his thoughts, until finally, he decided that he needed to throw them at least some semblance of a bone.

"My name is Harry Potter," he finally spoke in fluent yet accented Japanese, one hand twitching in a long-ingrained instinct to smooth his hair over his forehead to hide the vivid red scar like a bolt of lightning branded above his right eye.

But no one reacted to the name. No one's faces lit up in shocked recognition, and nobody's eyes performed that standard flick towards his forehead that he had once grown so used to, and hated so dearly.

Once again, Harry found himself relishing his newfound anonymity.

However, the reporters still buzzing around him weren't going to let him get off with a just a name, whether they recognized it or not. And so they started pestering him once again.

"What is your quirk?"

"Is it enhanced agility?"

"Maybe reflexes?"

"Can you spot a villain's weaknesses?"

"Are you a precog like Sir Nighteye?"

This time, Harry snorted, his lips spreading in a faint, bittersweet smile as his brilliant green eyes flashed with memory.

"I don't have any powers," he answered simply.

Every reporter there stopped dead, stunned by this admission, though their reaction didn't hold a candle to the dumbfounded faces of the pro heroes in the alley, or the gaping astonishment from the blonde-haired teen still sitting on the ground, suddenly being forced to come to grips with having been rescued by somebody quirkless.

Harry paid none of them any mind, however. He simply continued his solitary trek through the alley, mind awash in painful memories.

"… _anymore_," he finished under his breath, pale fingers gently tracing the scar hidden on his forehead.

Reaching the street, he turned and joined seamlessly with the distant crowd, heading to the place that he now called home.

* * *

Back in the alley, however, a supposedly great hero stood reeling at what he had just heard, the perpetual stabbing pain in his side for once completely forgotten.

_He didn't have a quirk_, he quietly tried to process, watching as the similarly astounded professional heroes started dutifully gathering up the last remnants of the sludge villain's body, a monster none of them, even with all of their power and training, could manage to stand against, but which had still been brought low by the courageous actions of a young, untrained boy without any power at all.

Stunned, All Might glanced down at his skeletal arm. When using his power, this weak, atrophied limb, and all the rest of his gaunt, hunched figure, absolutely bulged with muscles and unrivaled strength. At those times, he stood tall and unchallenged, able to face any challenge with a smile as he defended the world from all who would dare threaten it. But ever since his injury, his body had been too weakened to sustain his incredible power for more than a few hours a day. And all the rest of the time, he was stuck like this, thin, weak, and reduced to nothing more than a helpless bystander in moments like this one, lacking the strength to step in, even as his heart begged him to.

But that boy … no power of his own, facing a villain that gave even pro heroes pause, and he still stepped in without a moment's hesitation, while the supposed greatest hero in the world stood idly by.

And he _won_! He still couldn't believe it! Here he stood, certain that he himself, All Might, the world's Symbol of Peace, couldn't be any kind of real hero without his power, and then this boy stepped in and proved in no uncertain terms that what truly made a hero wasn't their power, but their spirit, and their drive to win no matter the risk.

_Though of course, possessing a certain knack for cleverness and some truly astounding reflexes clearly doesn't hurt either!_ All Might mentally added with an impressed grin. _I mean, seriously! That kid was insane!_

As the crowd shifted around him, though, he blinked in surprise upon spotting the boy's shopping lying on the ground forgotten.

As he leaned down to pick it up, however, his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face lit up with a slow smile.

_Well, I guess I need to find that kid to return this, now don't I?_ he remarked to himself, looking towards the end of the alley the kid had disappeared through. _Wouldn't want him to lose his stuff, after all. That'd be a rather poor thanks for the kind of selfless courage he showed here_.

Excuse gathered, he hurried down the alley, bypassing the press and heroes alike.

Unfortunately, upon clearing the mouth of the alley, he realized that the kid was already lost from sight somewhere in the crowd gently streaming up and down the sidewalk, meaning he had something of an ordeal in front of him if he wanted to track this kid down.

"Well … Plus Ultra, I guess," All Might muttered to himself, eyes flashing with resolve as he got started.

* * *

Some time later, All Might panted as he slowly jogged down a mostly empty road, sweat beading on his forehead and darkening his scraggly golden hair.

_Man, this form is slow!_ he mentally complained, missing how his full-powered form let him clear city blocks in mere seconds. By contrast, his injured, emaciated form got winded climbing up a few steps, and jogging for just a single block made him feel like he was going to keel over and die, even at a speed that a somewhat less generous person would only really call a slightly quicker dawdle.

But at least he was confident he was on the right track! When he failed to spot the kid in the crowd, he had taken to asking people on the street if they had seen him, finding himself feeling oddly driven to find and speak with this boy.

To his surprise, though, a number of people seemed to recognize his description of the kid.

"Oh, him? Yeah, he started coming around about a month or so ago, I think," a man pushing a food cart told him. "Seems like a good kid, too. Real shame. He tends to come by from somewhere out thataways, if you want to find him."

"That foreign boy with the green eyes and messy black hair?" a motherly-looking woman cleaning the windows of a cheap thrift store answered. "Yes, the poor dear. I think he lives over near the beach now. Just awful. Someone should really do something about that boy. It's not right."

Over and over, All Might heard answers like that. Strange as he found them, though, he didn't have time to stop and ask them to explain. He simply "hurried" on his way once they pointed him in the right direction.

As his attention snapped back to the present, however, a wheezing All Might realized that he could finally spot the boy's gently plodding form farther down the road.

_Thank God! I was starting to get worried that this would all just be some wild goose chase!_ he thought in relief.

"Kid! Hey, kid!" he called out weakly in between heaving breaths. Turning, the boy seemed more than a little surprised to see a skeletally thin man jogging down the road towards him drenched in sweat and panting like he'd just run a marathon.

"Uh … yeah?" the teen responded uncertainly, coming to a halt to allow the tall yet hunched blond man to catch up.

"You … dropped … this," All Might panted when he finally reached him, holding out the shopping bag with an exhausted, trembling hand.

The boy blinked at him. "Did … you just … run all this way to give me back my shopping bag?"

"… um … yeah," All Might answered, suddenly feeling kinda stupid.

The boy's bright green eyes glimmered with uncertain surprise and gratitude. "Wow. Thanks. That's … really nice of you."

Reaching out, the boy took the bag. Upon noting how much the man was sweating and panting, though, he immediately reached into the bag and pulled out a bottle of water he had purchased earlier, holding it out to the stranger.

"Thank you very much," All Might said as he gratefully accepted the bottle before tilting it back and draining half of it in one go.

_Stupid weak form_, he internally complained for the umpteenth time.

"You know, I saw what you did back there. Impressive stuff," he told the boy after finally lowering the bottle with a satisfied gasp.

"Oh … that," the boy replied, suddenly looking somewhat sheepish as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, that wasn't exactly the smartest move in the world, I know. But I couldn't just stand by and do nothing. I had to at least _try_ and help."

All Might chuckled. "I'm not too sure many would be able to say the same, especially when facing something like that. For most people, the normal thing to do would be to just trust that someone else will handle things. It takes a lot of courage to step in yourself to protect someone in need, even if doing so could get you killed."

Suddenly, the boy's eyes darkened slightly as a somber, thoughtful look fell over his face.

"Yeah," he muttered quietly before turning and continuing on his way.

All Might blinked at the boy's sudden melancholic turn.

"Oh, hey, I didn't mean anything negative by that," he hastily assured the kid, falling into step with him. "I just meant that you showed some incredible bravery back there, rushing in to help that kid even when the pros themselves were stepping back, and without any powers of your own, even."

"No, I'm not offended or anything," the teen told the tall man, still staring at the ground in front of him, seemingly deep in thought. "It's just … I've been thinking something similar myself ever since the alley."

All Might gave him a querying look.

"That what I did was unusual," the boy explained, seemingly as much to himself as to the man, appearing to be puzzling through something that had been eating at him. "That most people wouldn't have done what I did. That the normal thing to do there would have been to just wait in the crowd and let someone else handle things." He frowned. "But I just don't understand _why_."

All Might's brow furrowed. "You mean, you don't understand why you stepped in?" he asked, still idly walking beside the boy.

"No," the boy answered. "I don't understand why others _didn't_."

All Might's eyebrows raised at that, but he simply remained quiet as the boy thought aloud, almost seeming to forget he was even there.

"That crowd of people," the boy continued, "something like 80% of them had some kind of superpower, right? That's what I keep hearing, anyway."

All Might found the boy's phrasing rather curious, but didn't interrupt.

"And still … they just stood by," the lost-in-thought teen kept speaking. "Even if they haven't been trained like the pros were, they still chose to stand there and do nothing, even after seeing what that villain was doing to that kid. None of them made any attempt to step in, even though almost all of them had some kind of power. Any one of them could have probably done what I did, and they could have done it _better_, since they had powers and I … don't."

The boy's fist tightened at that admission, but he simply kept going.

"When I stepped in, it was something unusual. _Abnormal_. People say it was brave, because it's not something a normal person would do. But why isn't it? Why is it some rare, grand thing when a person steps forward to help someone in need, while the normal thing is to just stand by and watch?"

All Might nodded slowly in understanding. "You're angry with everyone who stood by and didn't get involved?" he prompted.

The boy paused, but shook his head. "No. I'm not angry with them." His eyes widened slightly in realization. "I _pity_ them."

All Might was taken aback by that statement.

"I've always wanted to be normal," the boy continued, still almost thinking aloud. "I never wanted to stand out, never wanted to be anything other than 'just Harry', a boring, ordinary kid." He snorted. "But I'm not."

The faint clack of their footsteps suddenly grew muffled as their path moved from pavement to sand, but neither paid it any mind. All Might simply listened raptly to the boy, as the latter continued venting with the kind of unrestrained honesty and self-reflection you can only really manage when speaking to an absolute stranger that you never expect to see again.

"I really tried, you know," he continued. "When I first got here, I had lost … well, I was suddenly about as normal as someone could be. So I tried to live up to that. I did my best to live a quiet, anonymous life. I thought I could be happy like that. But … that's not who I am." He looked down at the back of his hand, which All Might noticed was marked with some strange-looking scar, though the light was too dim to see it properly. "When I see someone in trouble, I don't even really think about it. I just step in and try to help. I've always been like that. It's only afterwards that I realize that what I did may have been stupid or dangerous, or that most normal people wouldn't have bothered."

All Might smiled. "It sounds like you've got the heart of a hero," he said quietly, more than a little familiar with that particular feeling, and with the look in the boy's eyes.

The teen gave a sudden, bittersweet chuckle. "A friend of mine called it my 'saving-people thing'." His frown returned. "When I was younger, I always hated the attention this got me. I thought it was just because I hated being in the spotlight. But now … I think that what truly bothered me was that what I did was considered _worthy_ of the spotlight at all. It frustrated me when people praised me for what I did, because I was always sure that what I did was nothing special, and that anyone would have done the same if they had been there instead of me. But when everyone obsessed over what I did, and cheered me on for doing it … they were all saying otherwise."

"Yeah," All Might responded quietly, understanding the kind of disappointment the boy felt. "But what can you do, you know?" he absently commiserated.

For several quiet seconds, the boy seemed to process his words, the only sound between them being the soft crunch of sand under their feet. All of a sudden, however, his head jerked and he came to an abrupt stop as he seemed to be struck by a revelation, his eyes widening in understanding even as they lit up with purpose. "I don't want to be special," he reaffirmed slowly, almost tasting his words. "I don't want to be considered brave, or heroic, or unusual. I just want to be normal, like I always have. But …"

As the teen hesitated to say it, All Might's eyes gleamed, realizing where he was going with this. "You want to change what it _means_ to be normal," he finished for the boy, a broad smile spreading across his face.

The boy snorted. "God, that sounds arrogant, but … _yeah_," he answered firmly. "I want to help make a world where stepping forward to help someone in need isn't considered heroic; it's just considered … _normal_. I want to see a world where standing back and doing nothing when someone is in trouble is what's considered unusual." He smiled. "I want to see a world where the word 'hero' is redundant."

As they walked, All Might stared at the boy, astonished at hearing this kind of dream from a teenager, something he hadn't experienced since he himself was a boy speaking to his master.

Even now, as he watched, the teen began walking with a newfound drive, limbs held with the kind of casual ease that only comes from truly finding and accepting one's purpose in the world. As he stared, the boy's eyes flashed with a soft yet determined light in the afternoon sun, no longer lowered to the ground, but now raised towards the horizon.

"You know," All Might began softly, causing the boy to blink as he seemed to remember he was there, "a dream like that … it'll be hard to pull off without any power of your own. Maybe impossible."

The boy chuckled. "That's the whole point, though, isn't it? Encouraging people to do what's right, not just what's easy? It'd be pretty pathetic if I couldn't live up to that ideal myself." He smiled. "This world has so much potential, especially with so many people having powers. If there's even the slightest chance I can do something to help inspire them to use that power for good, not as some grand, heroic gesture on their part, but just as part of their new standard of normal … isn't that worth a little difficulty? Or a little sacrifice?"

All Might stared at the teen in wonder, amazed at this kid's unwavering strength of character.

_It looks like I've found him_, he noted with a satisfied smile.

"Well, then, I have just one thing to ask you," All Might began, drawing himself up to his full, albeit thin, height. "What … is that _smell_?!"

As the teen looked on in surprised confusion, All Might began gagging and choking on the horrifying scent of rotting seaweed and over-warm garbage that came drifting by on an errant gust.

"Oh, yeah, that," the boy replied as he caught the scent himself. "Yeah, that takes a bit of getting used to around here. Thankfully, the breeze usually tends to take the smell outwards towards the sea, so it kind of comes and goes."

As All Might regained control of his burning sinuses, however, he finally started taking note of where they were.

"Is this a dump?" he asked in astonishment, staring at mounds and mounds of broken-down appliances, decayed bags of refuse, and every other piece of junk or garbage one could reasonably dream up piled high on the sand all around them.

"Well, kinda," the boy replied, stepping around a gutted washing machine to reveal a distinctly clear and garbage-free niche dug out between towering walls of broken-down cars and shattered television sets.

Upon opening the mangled door to one of the cars, the boy revealed a neat stack of blankets, shirts, and personal hygiene products. Opening another door revealed a small stack of canned food, bottled water, and other meal odds and ends.

With casual, practiced movements, the boy then began unloading his shopping bag and putting things away in their proper places.

Stunned silent, All Might simply stood there.

'_Seems like a good kid, too. Real shame. He tends to come by from somewhere out thataways, if you want to find him.'_

'_That foreign boy with the green eyes and messy black hair? Yes, the poor dear. I think he lives over near the beach now. Just awful. Someone should really do something about that boy. It's not right.'_

_This is what they meant_, All Might realized, watching the boy place a newly purchased bar of soap on a ragged car cushion. _This … is his home_.

"From what I can tell, the tides bring a lot of garbage in here," the boy explained over his shoulder as he continued putting his things away. "And the locals tend to use this place as an unofficial dumping ground because of it. Over time, this made the place … well, what it is now."

Finishing by unloading a new supply of water bottles, sans the one clutched limply in All Might's hand, the boy closed the mangled doors to his makeshift cupboard with what looked like a washcloth and an older, nearly vanished bar of soap in hand.

"I hope you don't mind, but fighting that sludge villain felt like rolling around in a sewer, so …," he held up the washcloth.

All Might nodded numbly as the boy turned and trekked down a clean-swept stretch of sand leading from his hidey-hole to the lapping edge of the ocean, where he rolled up his pants and waded out before removing his filth-crusted shirt and violently swirling it around in the water to get the worst of it out.

All the while, All Might stared at the patch of sand the boy seemed to call home.

_He has nothing_, he thought in astonishment, looking down at the water bottle the boy had freely gifted him from his own meager stores. _And still … the only thing he thinks about is helping others_.

He was stunned.

"No good," the boy's voice intruded on his thoughts as the teen returned from the water's edge. "The shirt's a goner. Figured it would be, but I at least had to try." Mouth twisted, he laid the sodden garment on the hood of the mangled car.

All Might barely noticed, though. The boy hadn't put the clean shirt on yet after scrubbing his skin clean in the ocean, and what All Might could see was … horrifying.

On the whole, the teen seemed to be in excellent shape, admittedly, with the tightly corded muscles of a dedicated athlete, but one that focused on speed and agility as opposed to just raw strength. Maybe a runner? Or a swimmer?

But what really pulled focus, and disturbed him deeply to see on someone so young, was the boy's _scars_.

The boy's right shoulder was marked by a disturbingly wide, ropy white scar, as if someone had taken a swipe at him with something heavy and pointed. And the inside of that arm's elbow bore a large, teardrop-shaped scar that almost looked like the mark of some utterly monstrous fang having dug deep into the boy's flesh, though All Might couldn't imagine what type of creature could have left a mark like that.

The boy's other side wasn't any better, with a long, jagged scar marring his left forearm in almost a mirror to the other, though this one bore the distinct appearance of a knife wound, albeit one wielded by someone with none too steady a hand.

After a few decades as a professional hero, All Might had become depressingly familiar with knife wounds, after all.

Even the boy's ribs weren't unmarred, bearing a series of large, circular scars like some large snake had bitten deep into his side and refused to let go, though at least those marks were smaller than the one dominating the inside of his right elbow.

As the boy's weight shifted on the sand, All Might even saw that one of his calves bore a set of odd-shaped marks like he had been mauled by something with massive pincers.

But the worst mark he saw was the same one he had noticed earlier on the back of the boy's hand. The lighting and angle hadn't been right for him to realize it before, but the looping, stark-white marks on the back of the boy's hand … were _words_.

There, looking like it had be carved with a scalpel, rested the phrase "I must not tell lies" written in English in an untidy scrawl, a clear and nauseating sign of torture having been inflicted on this boy at some point in his past.

By the end, All Might barely even flinched when the boy scratched at his hairline and shifted his bangs enough to uncover a bone-white scar shaped like a bolt of lightning branded on his forehead.

"Sorry about that back there, by the way," the boy's voice once more intruded on All Might's thoughts, this time as the boy rustled around in the backseat of his cabinet-car and pulled out a clean shirt. "For ranting at you like that, I mean," the boy explained, pulling the long-sleeved shirt over his head and finally hiding the majority of his scars from view once more, even as the act seemed to mess up his hair even further, hard as it was to believe. "I was just … sorting through some thoughts that've been kind of brewing under the surface for a while now, and they all just seemed to come to a head after that whole alley thing, you know? But putting them all into words finally helped me make sense of what I was feeling and what I want to do. So thanks for listening, even if I didn't mean to unload on you like that. I know it probably all seemed like just a bunch of weird rambling."

"No, it's … it's fine," All Might answered quietly, still processing … well, everything. "So this … is where you live?"

"Hmm?" The boy looked around. "Oh, yeah. For now, at least. It's a long story, but I kinda just got … well, _dumped_ here without much beyond the shirt on my back, and it's been kinda slow going to get my feet under me around here. For some reason, not too many places seem all that keen on hiring a fifteen-year-old kid who doesn't even have any papers or anything." He shrugged, visibly unconcerned. "_Still beats my old cupboard, though,_" he added half under his breath, tilting back his head and staring at the clear, golden afternoon sky overhead.

The boy breathed deeply with a faint, relaxed smile on his face as he did.

"And … how do you … _survive_, then?" All Might asked hesitantly, glancing at the grocery bag still resting on the sand.

"Salvage, mostly," Harry answered, lowering his gaze to the piles of refuse around them. "A lot of stuff around here is worth at least a few bucks at the recycling plant. Scrap metal, electronics, glass … you name it, this place has it. It's enough to get by, at least."

All Might blinked. "Wait, isn't the recycling plant on the other side of the district?"

The boy gave a dismissive shrug. "It keeps me in shape," he said simply.

For several moments, All Might simply stared at this astounding kid, utterly beyond words, even as his hand tightened on the bottle of water the boy had given him.

Those scars of his spoke of some unfathomably hard life for someone his age, somehow culminating in him living homeless on a beach surrounded by piles of garbage, without a real home or apparently even a family of his own, even if he didn't ask about the latter, fearing it would likely be a tragic and painful subject for the boy, given his situation. And yet here this kid stood, brave beyond words and willing to do whatever it took to save a perfect stranger even at a risk to his own life, utterly selfless enough to share what little he had without any prompting, willing to work hard for what scraps he did have without a single word of complaint, and somehow _still_ idealistic enough to want to change the world, even without any power of his own.

Any reasonable person would be utterly crushed and broken if they had been subjected to even a _fraction_ of what this kid seemed to have shouldered, but not him. Somehow, _miraculously_, this young man managed to retain his hero's spirit, constantly thinking of others, and just quietly refusing to let the world break him.

_This boy …_, All Might thought in amazement. _Even without any power, I somehow don't have any doubt that he'll manage to become a hero the likes of which this world has never seen before._ His sunken eyes shined with pure admiration. _His is the kind of soul that legends are made from_.

To be honest, his decision had been made quite some time ago. But even still, he found himself smiling in unwavering confidence at his choice, everything he learned about this kid simply hammering home again and again that he had made the right decision.

As for the kid in question, he gave the suddenly silent stranger an uncertain look. "Are you okay, Mr. … I just realized I never asked your name," the boy admitted with surprise. "I'm Harry Potter. Who are you?"

The gaunt man's smile grew into a toothy grin as he prepared to have a little fun. "Me?" he asked happily, his body starting to swell as muscles filled out and power raced through his veins, causing more than a little alarm to flash across the face of the astonished teen watching. "I am the Symbol of Peace in a world beset by a war against justice and decency! I am the light that shines in the darkness to bring hope to all those who look upon it! **I am ALL MIGHT!"**

The boy's mouth hung open as he stared at him. Reasonable, considering the extent of the change this stranger had just undergone.

Once bony limbs now bulged with muscle even as the man's spine straightened, turning a hunched, sickly looking man into a towering giant whose clothes strained over his sudden body-builder physique. Even the man's hair had changed, his shaggy blonde locks slicking back perfectly as the two long bangs that had once limply framed his face now stood tall like a pair of wings rising over his forehead. Even the man's face had changed, his sunken cheeks filling out and a wide, beaming grin taking root on his previously almost dour face.

The boy simply blinked at him.

"**Alarming, isn't it?"** the grinning superhero asked before belting out a booming laugh. **"But have no fear! This is no impostor! It is truly I, All Might, the world's top hero, in the flesh! Exciting, I know! And don't worry! I'm sure I can get you an autograph before all is said and done! But right now, we need to focus! There is a matter of grave import at hand that we must discuss!"**

For several long moments, Harry continued to silently stare at the perpetually beaming, boisterous superhero.

"… _My God, he's like Superman and Gilderoy Lockheart had some kind of horrible love child_," he finally whispered in almost horrified fascination.

"**Err …,"** an off-balance All Might uttered, his signature smile wavering slightly as he struggled to respond to the boy's words, and the utter lack of recognition in his eyes. **"Right, well … the truth is, I didn't come all this way just to return your things to you, young man. In fact, I was deeply impressed by what I saw you do in that alley, even more so when I heard you admit that you lacked any power of your own. I wanted a chance to meet you in person, and to find out more about this remarkable boy who would put his life on the line to save a complete stranger."**

The boy blinked as he processed the booming hero's words, but after a moment, his eyes widened and he gave the blond giant a confused, almost accusatory look. "Wait, you said you were the world's top hero. If that's true, then why didn't you step in when all that was happening?"

All Might's perpetual smile became more of a grimace at those words. **"Why indeed,"** he muttered, reaching down and lifting up the left side of his shirt.

Harry took a reflexive step back upon seeing what it had been covering up.

"**Not very pretty, is it?"** the hero asked, fairly redundantly, for as bad as some of the teen's scars were, the one this hero just revealed blew them all away. The hero's whole side was a mass of reddened, puckered scar tissue radiating out from a palm-sized circle of thin-stretched skin resting over his ribs.

"**I received this injury from a particularly nasty villain five years ago,"** the hero informed him, his booming voice actually growing relatively quiet and somber as memory passed through the eyes nearly hidden in the shadows of his face. **"Its consequences have been … severe,"** the man continued. **"I lost a portion of my lungs, and the entirety of my stomach. Worse than that, however, is that my body has now become too weak and frail to truly handle my immense power."** The hero's grin turned bitter. **"What was once my natural state is now simply a mask that I'm lucky if I can wear for a few hours each day before my body gives out."**

As if on cue, the man's hulking body suddenly began smoking before snapping back to his weakened, emaciated form, the man hunching in on himself as he coughed blood.

Alarmed, Harry rushed to the man's side, supporting his shoulders and keeping him from collapsing into the sand as he hacked and coughed.

After a few moments, however, the fit subsided and the man began weakly patting the concerned teen's hand on his shoulder. "I'm alright … I'm alright," the man assured him tiredly, wiping blood from his lips with a shaky hand that once more resembled little more than skin stretched tightly over bones.

"I'm so sorry. I … had no idea," Harry apologized quietly, rubbing the hunched man's back as the latter hacked and spit up the last of the blood that had pooled in his lungs.

The man simply chuckled in response. "It's not your fault," he assured the boy, standing up straighter as the boy released his shoulders. "We all have to deal with the hands that fate has dealt us, no matter how kind or cruel. That's just life." Lifting his hand, the man stared at the blood staining the back of his knobbly hand. "However," he continued, "the fact of the matter is, I can't remain the world's Symbol of Peace for much longer in my condition." Lowering his hand, his blue-gleaming eyes fell on the startled face of the boy. "And so, for the past several months, I have dedicated myself to finding a successor, someone worthy of inheriting my great power and taking my place as the pillar that supports this wondrous, fragile world of ours." The man's thin lips stretched in a pleased grin. "And today, I found him."

The boy's jaw dropped as his eyebrows lifted almost into his hairline. "Me?"

"No, the sludge villain," the gaunt man answered dryly. "Of course, you! Geez, and here I was thinking you were smart!"

The teen's eyes widened further. "But … I'm just–"

"Brave enough to risk your life for others," the man cut him off curtly, "selfless enough to share what you have freely even when you have almost nothing yourself, clever enough to defeat a villain that made pro heroes back down, and idealistic enough to want to change the world even after living a life that I think I'm safe in assuming wasn't exactly filled with sunshine and bunnies. Do I really need to go on, or have I made my point?"

The boy's face flushed crimson, and his expression said he was struggling to hold his tongue to keep from arguing with the things the man had said about him.

Once more, the man chuckled, a fond look in his eye. "That dream of yours … it's admirable. _Noble_. But if you want to truly have a shot at pulling it off, you're going to need to become more than just a hero. You're going to have to become a _symbol_, the greatest hero this world has ever seen. Only then will you be capable of inspiring others the way you dream of doing. And to do that, you're going to need power. _My_ power. So, I guess the question really is, do you want to keep telling me how unworthy you are, and watch your dream die a stillborn, or do you want to accept my praise, and my power, and seize your chance to make that dream of yours flourish?"

The boy stared at him, an almost indignant look in his eye at how the older man had outmaneuvered him, making the man chuckle once again.

"… Can you really just pass on your power like that?" the teen finally asked quietly.

All Might nodded. "I can," he said simply.

In response, Harry looked down at his own hand.

"I actually used to have power of my own, you know," he said, more quietly than ever.

All Might's eyes widened in shock at the admission, but the teen wasn't done.

"I lost it, though … doing what I thought was right." The boy turned his hand over, and stared deeply at the words carved into the back of his fist. "I lost everything that day," he continued, immense but unreadable emotion passing through his eyes. "But I accepted it as just the price I needed to pay." His fist tightened. "In fact … a part of me was even relieved," he admitted. "I had done what I needed to. My fight was over, and suddenly, I was given a chance to start over, free of everything that had once made me stand out, everything that I thought had cursed me. I could finally just live a normal life." A slow smile spread across his face. "But who am I kidding? Helping others, and saving people in need … that's always just been a part of who I am, power or no power. And if I want to help make it a part of others as well, then you're right. I need power. That's the only way I'm going to be able to inspire that kind of change … and it's the only way I'll be able to keep myself alive long enough to pull it off, too."

The eyes that met All Might's were no longer shadowed in memory and uncertainty. The gleamed in certainty, and a determination that would shake the world to its foundations.

"I accept."

All Might grinned. "That's the spirit, kid!" he praised, more sure of his choice than ever.

Harry smiled back. "So … how does this work?"

"Well, luckily, you seem like you're already in excellent shape," All Might answered, "which is good, because this is an extraordinarily powerful quirk, and an unprepared body would likely explode if it tried to use it."

Harry suddenly felt somewhat less sure of his choice.

"But your body appears strong, and if your spirit can match it, then …," All Might reached up and plucked one long, golden hair from his head, proffering it to the teen, "_eat this!_"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"To inherit my power, you've got to swallow some of my DNA. That's how it works!"

"…"

"…"

"… I NEED AN ADULT!"

* * *

**Author's note:** Now, before I say anything else, if any previous readers of mine are seeing this, I'd like it to be known that this is all my sister's fault. She loved this show and absolutely insisted that I watch it, and now, here we are. So yup, completely and undeniably her fault. All you guys who are ticked about how long it's taking me to update my other stories should totally blame her. I just work here.

On the plus side, though, I've finally had enough of my crippling ADD and have started taking medication for it again, so I might actually be able to start being productive and efficient with my time now.

The madness!

As for this story, though, you should know that I'm shooting for a more generally upbeat, humorous tone, but with some angst and drama sprinkled here and there for seasoning. I mention this because I've gotten some flack for these brief, darker turns in other stories of mine, so I thought I'd make sure you guys got a heads up beforehand. Even if things end up more zany and fun on the whole, they aren't going to stay that way in every single chapter throughout the whole thing. That would make for a pretty flat, one-note story to me. Conversely, however, even if things take a darker or more painful turn from time to time, they aren't going to stay there, either. That would make for a pretty joyless suckfest that I certainly wouldn't want to write.

So basically, you can expect a little bit of everything as you deal with a writer who's still trying to find his niche. Hopefully, it'll make for a fun and interesting ride!

Also, this story is going to be a multi-pairing, because that's still just who I am. I've settled on some of the members, but not all of them, so let me know your thoughts. Beyond that, the make-up of class 1-A is going to be changed up a bit compared to canon, too, with me replacing some of the (to me, at least) more boring or forgettable characters with others I find more interesting or fun, but the final cast isn't quite set in stone yet, so let me know your thoughts on that, too, if you're interested.

Oh, and there'll be some genderbent characters as well. Because why not, right? It's fanfiction. Might as well go a bit nuts.

Beyond that, I hope you enjoy the story, and I'll see you next time! Toodles!


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter ****2**** – ****My little baby, off to destroy people!**

…

The persistent rhythm of footsteps on stone echoed in his ears, each one seeming as soft as whispered dreams, yet somehow as momentous as a judge's gavel.

'_You are a fool, Harry Potter. And you will lose … everything.'_

"_Harry! Please, what are you doing?! Harry!"_

His heart twisted as the desperate sound cleaved through his ears, reaching deep inside to carve into his very spirit.

'_Nice one, James!'_

'_Neither can live while the other survives …'_

"_Let me go! You have to let me go! Please, Harry!"_

He was aware of screaming. The sort of mindless wail that comes from indescribable agony … or was it rage? He couldn't tell. It was just so distant … and he couldn't stop to listen.

'_It isn't how you are alike. It's how you are not!'_

'_Control your emotions! Discipline your mind!'_

"_You've got to stop! Please, you can't do this! YOU HAVE TO STOP!"_

He couldn't stop. He knew that much. He had to keep moving. He wished the fog would clear so he could remember _why_ … but at the same time, he didn't need to. He knew it was important. That the world depended on it. What's a little thing like "why" in the face of something like that?

'_Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon, we must all face the choice between what is right … and what is easy.'_

"… I'm sorry …"

'_Bow to death, Harry._'

"_HARRY! __… __–arry! … –arr– …"_

The voice was growing fainter now. Like it was reaching him from the end of a cold, dark tunnel. But rather than letting him think more clearly, his thoughts seemed more clouded than ever, each one reaching him like sound through cotton.

It was peaceful.

'_It does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live.'_

"–**arr– … –arry! …"**

The voice was … coming back? That was odd. It almost sounded different than before, too … but he couldn't focus … couldn't make himself care … he was just so _tired_ … he had done enough, now, right?

He could rest now, couldn't he?

"–**arry! … Harry!"**

He felt an indescribable longing overtake him, as if something precious was being snatched away as he grew warmer, the cold and the dark peeling away …

Abandoning him …

'_The ones we love never really leave us.'_

"**HARRY!_"_**

Slowly forcing his reluctant eyelids open, Harry stared for a moment in groggy confusion. The sound of waves gently lapping on a beach reached him before his open eyes could process the sight of the clean, ruddy sky filling his vision, disrupted only by some strange shape that his sluggish mind couldn't quite interpret. For a moment, he felt a bolt of panic course through him as he found himself completely at a loss as to where he was or what was going on. However, he groaned upon suddenly recognizing the perpetually beaming face of All Might bent over him, his wakening mind finally catching up.

"**About time, lazy bones! Come on, up up up! This is no time to be lying about! You know I can only spend so much time in this form, and you're wasting it!"**

"Ngh. How selfish of me," Harry croaked, inching his way to a seated position as he rubbed his throbbing skull, which rather firmly protested movement of any kind at the moment. "Next time I decide to take a nap by headbutting your fist, I'll try and keep in mind that my unconsciousness will really be an annoyance to you," he dryly snarked, slowly and gracelessly clambering to his feet, where he wavered drunkenly on the warm sand. "Side note: you do know that getting knocked unconscious is super bad for you, right?" he asked the pair of All Might's lazily circling each other in his currently spotty, double vision.

The hulking superhero gave a booming, boisterous laugh in response. **"Oh, that's just worrywart nonsense! Every hero worth their salt suffers a good knockout every now and again! Why, I myself must have been knocked unconscious _at least_ once a week in my first year!**"

Harry gave the slowly conjoining All Might's an amused stare. "That would actually explain a lot, now that I think about it."

All Might gave him a slightly indignant grin. **"Well, if you're recovered enough to show such disrespect to your elders, that must mean you're well enough to continue sparring!"** the towering mass of muscle proclaimed, his smile taking on a slightly sadistic twist as he assumed a combative stance, his feet shifting in the sand with a grinding crunch. **"And if you're really so worried about being knocked unconscious, maybe think about stopping me every once in a while."**

Grimacing in apprehension, the teen reluctantly copied the man, his feet sliding into position. "I'll try and remember that," he answered sardonically.

Tense moments passed as the two opponents stared at each other, the sharp scent of brine drifting by on the cool breeze filling their lungs as each of them studied the other, watching sharply for the faint shift of eyes or the slight tensing of muscle that would betray the other's movements.

The sudden burst of smoke from the smiling superhero made all these efforts fairly pointless, however, accompanied as this was by the powerful, heroic body deflating like a balloon, leaving a scrawny, sickly man in its place.

"Ah, damn it," the man weakly cursed, coughing blood and clutching at his side. "Guess my time's already up."

"You mean my stint as your human punching bag is over for the day?" Harry asked, a smile blooming on his face as he relaxed his pose. "Such a shame."

The scrawny man glared at his smug-looking pupil, an expression made far more severe by his injury-blackened sclera and sharply glowing blue irises.

"You know, I don't think I hear quite enough disappointment in your voice, young man," he remarked, causing the smile to vanish suddenly from the boy's face even as his own grew wicked. "But that's okay. I know that deep down, you think it'd be a good idea for you to make up all the precious training time you wasted just lounging about."

Harry's face was as apprehensive as it was exasperated.

"So how about …," the scrawny All Might drawled, face screwed up in thought, "one hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, one hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run. That should do for a start, don't you think?"

Harry simply stared at the man.

"You're right. We need a five-kilometer swim to round things off," the man nodded as if to sage advice, his lanky golden bangs swinging freely. "… Well?" he added with an expectant look.

Grumbling wordlessly, Harry nevertheless dropped to the ground without further ado, palms digging into the afternoon-warmed sand as he tiredly, yet diligently, began the allotted push-ups.

All Might smiled proudly at this display from the bruised, sweat-soaked teen, already exhausted from a full day's training, yet still unflinchingly doing what he needed to do in order to fulfill his dream.

"My boy … I want you to know just how proud of you I am," All Might said quietly.

Harry's push-ups briefly stalled before continuing, his routine suddenly less even.

"You've really impressed me these last few months," the emaciated man continued, turning and gazing out across the gleaming expanse of clean, golden coastline. The once ghastly dumping ground towering with garbage was now a spot of serene beauty where one could stand and watch the sun set over the shimmering blue water as it gently lapped over the pure, silken sand. "Training your body by cleaning up this whole beach … that was a massive undertaking, power or no power. But you did it, faster and better than I could have ever hoped for, and without uttering a single word of complaint."

"I don't know about that," Harry spoke up with a curious, thoughtful tone. "Does cursing your name and calling you a scraggly old bastard whenever you weren't around count as a complaint?"

The man rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Oh, would you can it? I'm trying to compliment you, here!"

Harry snickered, but dutifully remained silent as he continued his push-ups.

The man sighed and continued. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that all your hard work has been incredible. But what's truly impressed me over these last few months has been your astounding strength of will, and your utterly unshakable determination to accomplish what you've set your mind to, no matter what it takes."

For several moments, the only sound was the quiet huffs of air as the sweating teen continued his push-ups, face red from more than just exertion.

"It's not in me to give up," the embarrassed teen finally muttered. "Especially not for something as important as this."

The gaunt-faced man gave a wide, beaming grin at that response. "And I am glad to hear it!" he declared, deftly and abruptly stepping onto the teen's back, whose eyes bulged as he was driven flat into the sand at the sudden, unexpected weight. "Because believe me, you're going to need every scrap of willpower and determination you can muster if you want to make your dream a reality!

After several seconds spent huffing and grunting into the sand, the teen slowly resumed his rhythm, albeit a bit more shakily than before.

"Anyone who wants to change this world must first overcome it," the man stated, rhythmically rising and falling from where he was firmly planted on the teen's back. "So if you truly want to change what this world views as normal, and make it so that even everyday citizens are willing to step up and perform acts of heroism as naturally as they would loan their neighbor a cup of sugar, then you're going to have to work harder and rise higher than any other prospective hero out there! Only then will you be able to take my place, and become a Symbol of Peace that can inspire this world!"

All Might grinned fiercely at the heaving, struggling teen still performing his wavering push-ups beneath him. "So with that in mind, how about you cut this warm-up of yours short and get to the actual workout? The future awaits!"

Braced on trembling arms, the red-faced, sweat-soaked teen shot the man an incredulous look over his shoulder. "What do you mean 'warm-up'?! I'm doing the push-ups just like you told me to!"

"Is that so? Because I haven't heard you counting," the man idly commented, still balanced on the boy's shaking back.

The boy's eyes narrowed. "Are you serious?"

"Really? You want to add another five kilometers to the swim? I don't know … That might be a bit much, but I suppose if you _really_ want to …," All Might pondered consideringly, smirking at the teen below him.

"Oh, for the love of … eighty-six! … eighty-seve–!"

"No, no, no!" All Might interrupted the nearly growling teen. "Half-measures don't count. We do things right, or not at all. So start at 'one'."

Harry's eyes looked like they were going to bulge out of his skull. "You're _shitting_ me!"

"That doesn't sound like a Symbol of Peace in the making to me," All Might remarked, lazily studying his fingernails.

The exhausted, infuriated teen muttered darkly as he lowered them both to the sand, the words "scraggly old bastard" and something about "channeling Oliver Wood's demented spirit" just barely audible as he strained and huffed to raise them both.

"… o-one!" He finally groaned before slogging through the whole process again. "… t-t-two!"

"_I can't hear you …_" All Might sang mockingly.

"… ONE! … T-TWO!"

"_That's _the spirit!" All Might laughed.

* * *

**February 26th**

Harry's breath fogged in the crisp morning air as he stared up at the pure, monolithic presence that was UA High, the number one hero academy in the country, and arguably the world.

As countless prospective students streamed past him, Harry found himself idly wondering whether his annual trend of one of his teachers trying to kill him would carry over from his Hogwarts days. His record _was_ disturbingly solid, after all.

"Hey! Kid!"

Harry blinked in bemusement as he turned to see the scrawny form of All Might jogging towards him, suddenly putting him in mind of just how he had first met the man all those months ago.

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked as the crippled hero placed his hands on his knees and gasped for breath.

"Tried to catch you … before you left …," the man panted, only to start coughing blood as he was wont to do.

No longer alarmed at what by this point had become an extremely familiar sight, Harry simply sighed and pulled out one of the handkerchiefs he now always kept on his person.

"Are you ever going to remember to carry one of these?" Harry tiredly chided the man for about the millionth time as he handed over the handkerchief.

"I will eventually!" the latter responded defensively as he used the handkerchief to wipe away the blood staining his lips and chin. "As for why I'm here … it's exam day! You didn't think I'd miss seeing you off, did you?"

Harry smiled. "I guess not," he replied warmly.

Smiling back, the gaunt man clapped a hand on the teen's shoulder as they both turned to stare at the towering expanse of steel and glass that rested before them.

"UA High," All Might said, his shadowed eyes gleaming with nostalgia. "My alma mater. Some of the greatest heroes in the world have walked these halls." As he turned and looked at the teen beside him, his smile grew wider. "And now, it's your turn."

All Might draped his arm over the boy's shoulders, clutching him tightly in almost fatherly pride as they looked on at the school in front of them.

"You've worked hard, my boy," All Might continued, his hand on the boy's shoulder tightening. "And today, the world's going to start to learn _exactly_ who you are." His eyes welled with emotion. "_The greatest hero it's ever seen_."

The boy looked up at him at that.

"Not because of your power, or your drive," All Might explained, "but because of your _heart_." He chuckled softly. "This poor world won't know what hit it."

Harry's face flushed brilliantly like it always did upon hearing praise from the man, even after so many months training alongside him, but his smile still brightened, and his eyes gleamed.

Without a word, the two clasped each other in a hug.

"Thank you, Toshinori," Harry muttered, his grip tightening.

"No, Harry," the man responded, eyes moistening. "_Thank you_."

After several more moments, the two finally disengaged, both quietly avoiding eye contact as they coughed and shifted about, rubbing at eyes that were clearly suffering the effects of the lesser-known winter allergy attack.

"Alright, enough mushy stuff. Get in there and give 'em hell, kid," All Might finally ordered.

Harry chuckled even as his eyes brightened in determination. "Yes, sir."

Turning, he joined the throng of students streaming towards the doors, preparing to take the practical exam that would determine their acceptance into UA, and set the course of their future.

Most of the students in the crowd showed signs of nervousness, or uncertainty, constantly looking around at their fellow students for comparison, reassuring themselves that they were indeed in the right place and that they had a shot at getting into this school that only accepted one out of three hundred applicants. Others walked with a feigned confidence, holding their heads high and outright refusing to look at anything but the doors in front of them. However, their true feelings were still given away by the stiffness of their limbs, and their almost robotic rhythm of their footsteps.

Not Harry, though.

Even from behind, the boy still stood out from all those around him. Where others were stiff, or jittery, he walked calmly, limbs loose and head held high, not in some show of confidence, but out of the simple knowledge that he was where he belonged. Success or failure didn't enter into it. This was simply his path.

"Walk tall, kid," All Might whispered, smiling proudly at the sight. "Walk tall."

As if on cue, Harry tripped over his own feet and sprawled face-first onto the pavement.

"Uh … maybe that was asking a bit much," All Might muttered in consternation as the assorted students laughed uproariously at the face-planted teen.

Sighing, All Might turned and walked away.

"The future Symbol of Peace, ladies and gentlemen," he chuckled in exasperated amusement.

* * *

A few blocks away, a fairly short girl with bob-cut brown hair and rosy cheeks panted as she sprinted down the sidewalks.

"Man, oh man!" she gasped, trying desperately to double her pace. "I can't _believe_ I'm running late!"

Wiping sweat off her forehead, she stared at the gleaming shape of UA High up ahead.

"I hope I haven't missed anything important!"

* * *

Face red, the collapsed teen regained his feet as laughter echoed in his ears.

"That … felt oddly preordained … yet incomplete," Harry muttered to himself in confusion, staring at the flat stretch of brick road he'd just tripped over for no apparent reason.

Shrugging off the bizarre feeling, he simply headed inside.

* * *

"_What's up, UA candidates?! Thanks for tunin' in to me, your school DJ! Come on, and let me hear ya!_"

The collective silence was deafening.

"_Keepin' it mellow, huh?_" Behind the podium, the DJ with long golden hair styled upwards like a cockatiel's plumage seemed slightly crestfallen at the total non-response. "_That's fine, I'll skip straight to the main show_," he continued, his voice booming from what looked like a neck-brace made out of speakers. "_Let's talk about how this practical exam's gonna go down! Are you __READ__YYYY__Y__?!_"

Silence once again greeted the energetic man's call-out, and as Harry looked out across the darkened, crowded auditorium from his corner near the back, not a single prospective student seemed at all interested in breaking it.

"_Like your application said, today, you rockin' boys and girls will be out there conducting ten-minute mock battles in super-hip urban settings!_" the bombing man kept going, visibly sweating behind his high-collared leather jacket. "_Gird your loins, my friends! After I drop the mic here, you'll head to your specified battle centers! Sound good?!_"

As silence once more reigned, Harry gave a faint snicker. "You know, you've got to admire his tenacity at least," he muttered quietly as he watched the man doggedly try and coax a response out of a bunch of nervous teenagers.

The girl sitting next to him snorted as she overheard him, her perpetually bored look lightening ever so slightly as one of her fingers lazily twirled what almost looked like headphone jacks dangling from her earlobes.

"_Okay okay! Let's check out your targets!_" their boisterous speaker continued, the massive screens behind him lighting up with the image of a small city and the shadowy outlines of what looked like different types of robots. "_There are three types of faux villains in every battle center! You'll earn points based on their level of difficulty, so better choose wisely! Your goal in this trial is to use your quirk to raise your score by shredding these faux villains like a mid-song guitar solo! But check it! Make sure you're keepin' things heroic! Attacking other examinees is a UA no-no, ya' dig?_"

All of a sudden, one of the students in the auditorium stood up and raised his hand stiffly. "Excuse me, sir, but I have a question!"

"_Hit me!_" their speaker cried happily, apparently just thrilled that someone was finally willing to speak.

A spotlight shone on the student at these words, revealing someone tall and wearing an impeccably crisp uniform and rectangular silver glasses. "On the printout, you've listed four types of villains, not three," the student accused, his neatly combed black hair almost seeming to bristle with indignation at the mistake as his hands moved constantly in a bizarre, almost robotic manner. "With all respect, if this is an error on official UA materials, it is shameful! We are exemplary students. We expect the best from Japan's most notable school. A mistake such as this won't do!"

Harry blinked as he stared at the unbelievably stiff student. _My god, he's like __Percy Weasley __on crack_, he thought in near horror at the very concept.

"_Alright, alright!_" their speaker responded, not sounding at all put out by the accusation. "_Examinee number 7111! Thanks for callin' in with your request!_" He flashed the kid a thumb's up and an almost Lockheartian grin. "_The fourth villain type is worth zero points!_" At the man's cue, the screen behind him updated to show the silhouette of the fourth, rather squat-looking robot. "_That guy's just an obstacle we'll be throwin' in your way. There's one in every battle center. Think of it as a hurdle you should try to avoid! It's not that it can't be beaten, but there's … kinda no point! I recommend my listeners try to ignore it and focus on the __ones__ toppin' the charts!_"

Robo-student bowed stiffly at the answer. "Thank you very much. Please, continue."

"_That's all I got for you today! I'll sign off with a little present: a sample of our school motto! As General Napoleon Bonaparte once laid down, 'A true hero is one who overcomes life's misfortunes.' Mm-hmm, now that's a tasty sound byte!_" The man lowered his triangular sunglasses and flashed them all a brilliant grin. "_You ready to go beyond?! __LET'S HEAR A __'__PLUS ULTRA__!_'"

As the unbelievably determined DJ was once again left hanging, Harry groaned to himself in exasperation. _Oh, would you just throw this poor guy a bone? He's dying, here!_

"_Plus ultra_," Harry yelled out flatly.

"_WOO-HOO! NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!_" the ecstatic DJ screamed in sheer and utter delight, resembling nothing so much as a Labrador that had just been released inside a tennis-ball factory. "_Good luck to you, listener! And to all the rest of my over-shy listeners out there as well! Hope you all practiced hitting more than just books!_"

The man's smile as he strutted away from the podium was absolutely blinding.

* * *

**Battle Center C**

As Harry stood before the towering gates leading to one of the seven fake cities built for the sole purpose of testing applicants to this school, he had only one thing to say.

"_How in the hell are they funding this?!_"

Shaking his head in disbelief, he tore his incredulous eyes off the sight of the massive wall surrounding the sprawling city. Instead, Harry began studying his fellow applicants crowded in front of the gates waiting for the test to begin.

Some seemed to be marveling at the sheer scale of the city, faces expressing thoughts similar to his own. Others were actively studying their fellow applicants, seemingly trying to get a sense for their abilities, or how much of a threat they posed to their own chances.

By and large, though, the trend Harry saw again and again was one of immense focus, and an almost ravenous sort of ambition he had previously only ever seen wearing green-and-silver uniforms.

It didn't surprise him to see it here, though. As All Might had explained fervently and in depth over and over again throughout the last several months, UA High was the best of the best. Bar none. Those who wanted to rise to the top, and become the greatest heroes in the world, couldn't afford to settle for anything less than this school. And with so many students competing to fill such a limited number of seats, it was inevitable that only the cream of the crop would manage to make it this far, or have any hope or reaching father still.

But power alone wasn't enough. No natural-born talents or abilities would be able to carry a student this far, not with so many competing against them. They would help, of course, but what truly made these students stand out, and gave them a shot at succeeding, wasn't necessarily that they were the most powerful candidates.

It was that they were the _hungriest_.

When up against so many rivals, the only way to come out on top was simply to want it more, and to be willing to dedicate everything you have to achieve that goal. All these students around him were those that had worked harder, struggled longer, and pushed themselves further than anyone else all for the chance to get here.

They were the walking, talking poster-children for ambition, and the relentless drive to excel no matter the cost.

And unfortunately, these were not exactly qualities that had often been associated with a certain Harry James Potter.

Ignoring the mortal struggles and sheer chaos that was his life in Hogwarts, the simple fact was that he'd … never exactly been a stand-out student in an academic sense.

It wasn't that he was unintelligent or anything. But when you were raised with a "family" that actively and severely punished you for getting better school marks than your near brain-dead cousin, this didn't exactly foster a studious attitude, nor any drive to compete and excel. In fact, it taught the opposite, training the young boy to see excelling and standing out as dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs.

Fast-forward to his acceptance at Hogwarts, and he suddenly found himself thrust into a world he didn't understand, and where he immediately discovered that he stood out far more than he could have ever feared, with every single person knowing his name and face, and all of them constantly watching him to see what he would do.

As he continued reflecting, he lifted his right hand, and stared at the gleaming white words carved into the back.

In that kind of situation, what else was a kid to do but try and fade into the background as much as he possibly could? Even if that meant taking all his old Dursley-enforced school-habits, and kicking them into overdrive? Combined with being friends with both a chronic underachiever who never liked being overshadowed in anything, and a walking encyclopedia who loved sharing knowledge so much that she didn't even seem to notice or care that she was being used as an academic crutch, and he had honestly become a bit lazy in terms of his actual schooling, and in mastering the powers he had been born with.

It was more important to be "just Harry", unseen and forgettable, than it was to see what he was truly capable of.

As his fist clenched, though, a slow smile spread across his face.

Things were different now.

He wasn't here because he was expected to be. He was here because he _chose_ to be.

This wasn't like that Boy-Who-Lived bullshit where everyone revered him just because he happened to be present when his mother defeated Voldemort. This wasn't like the Triwizard Tournament, where he was forced into the contest against his will, and his only concern was staying alive and keeping out of the scorn-filled limelight. This wasn't even like his admission to Hogwarts in the first place, decided because of a power he happened to have been born with, no different than his eye color, or the shade of his skin.

All around him, students began backing away nervously as emerald sparks began racing up and down his body, but he didn't even notice, and his smile only deepened.

No longer was he the Boy-Who-Lived, victim of fate, never doing anything more than reacting to the circumstances of his life.

Accepting this new power was a choice that he made. Learning to use it was a choice that he made. Coming here, and rising to the top, and fulfilling his dream of changing the world … these were all choices that _he made_!

His fellow competitors grew even more alarmed as his body began glowing with a translucent white light and smoke began gently billowing off the edges of his body, but he didn't notice this, either.

Nobody here knew the name "Harry Potter."

But they were going to.

Because it may have taken him over fifteen years, but he had _finally_ found his competitive spirit.

And this world was going to see just exactly what he was capable of.

As the crowd of candidates muttered nervously at the waves of power wafting off their rival's body, and at the fierce grin adorning his face, one single, booming word cut through it all like a knife.

"_BEGIN!_"

* * *

**The judging area**

In a darkened room crowded with monitors showing video footage of nearly every aspect of the upcoming test, a group of individuals sat talking.

"How wonderful! It would appear that we have a rather decent batch of candidates this year," a rather squeaky voice sounded from a small shape neatly seated in front of one of the monitors.

"I'll say," a lower, sultry voice replied. "Such youthful vigor … such raging _passion_ … I can practically smell it from here! Mmm, it's giving me goosebumps!"

"… seek help, Midnight," a man's dry, tired voice sounded.

Seated in front of one of his own monitors, the gaunt figure of All Might simply rolled his eyes and focused on the video of one group of candidates in particular.

It wasn't exactly _favoritism_ or anything like that. After all, it wasn't as if he planned on grading his secret protege any easier than he did anyone else! He was just … going to be keeping a slightly closer eye on the boy than on the other candidates! He was still totally impartial!

As the test got ready to start, however, he couldn't help the broad grin that spread across his face as he watched young Harry begin powering up in that peculiar way he had developed.

"Well now. That's not somethin' ya see every day," a man wearing a cowboy hat remarked in a gravelly, American twang as he watched that same footage.

"Oh. Well, that's quite the flashy start, isn't it?" Midnight cooed, watching emerald sparks roll off the boy's body as it began glowing with a faint, translucent white light. "I do hope he isn't just a shower, though." Her lips lifted in a smirk as she chuckled. "After all, no one likes a tease who can't follow through."

The earlier man groaned. "Again, Midnight. Help: Seek it."

"Oh, go curl up in your sleeping bag, Aizawa," the woman pouted.

"You've been rather quiet so far, All Might," the smallest member of their little troupe spoke up in his soft, squeaky voice. "What are your thoughts?"

"_BEGIN!_"

Without any warning, Present Mic's booming voice echoed through their speakers as the man started the exam with absolutely no build up or preparation whatsoever, leaving most of the students reeling in confusion.

Not his protege, though.

Like a runner under a starter's pistol, young Harry immediately leapt into action. Blowing past his confused competitors, the teen dashed through the opening gates and into the fake city without a moment's hesitation, arcs of lightning and curls of smoke trailing behind him as he did.

"I think we're about to see some shit," All Might finally replied, his grin of excitement eclipsing any he had made as the Symbol of Peace.

* * *

**Author's note:** Wow, you guys! I was really not expecting this story to be as popular as it's been! I'm glad you all like it so much, and I hope it doesn't disappoint :)

Now, if you're worried about how short this chapter is, don't worry! This was actually part of a much larger chapter, but after that monstrosity starting reaching over 16,000 words … well, it needed to be split up. So the next chapter is already written, and should be posted in the next few days. I just want to do a few more rounds of editing on it before sending it off, and I'd like to give you the chance to share what you think about this segment as well :)

Oh, and I forgot to mention this last time, but this story will also be pulling from and continuing into the manga, which I'm currently up to date on. However, particularly with the manga-based elements, I plan on explaining and presenting things in such a way that those who haven't read it won't be excluded or confused as to what's going on or who these non-show characters are. You may have more of an inside scoop into things if you've read it, but it shouldn't exactly be a necessity to follow this story.

Anyways, I hope you all like the chapter, and I'll see you next time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter ****3**** – ****Welcome … to the danger zone!**

…

**Author's totally boastful shout-out: **This chapter is dedicated to my awesome sister, who just got married yesterday! Here's to you, you mad adulting fool you!

…

**Battle Center C**

Harry distantly registered the uncertain chatter of the confused students behind him, as well as the DJ's booming voice as he likely informed them that he was fully serious and that the test had started. He also heard the pounding footsteps of those students who had needed no such clarification, and who were already pelting through the opening gates of the city just as he had.

He didn't really pay any of them much mind, though.

His focus was solely on the robot that had just darted out into the street in front of him. Running on three spidery legs and waving a deadly looking, scorpion-like tail in the air, the army-green robot seemed fully armed and willing to ruin someone's day.

More important to Harry, though, was the large, white "2" crudely painted on the thing's chest.

His grin widened.

Before the machine could react, he dropped into a slide, the momentum of his charge carrying him between the things legs in a heartbeat. Flipping himself over, he ground himself to a halt with the soles of his shoes and a brightly glowing hand dragging on the pavement. However, just as he readied himself to launch an attack at the unprepared robot … he found himself noticing a bright red button on the robot's back, helpfully labeled "Shutdown".

Bemused, he discarded his attack plans and simply pressed it.

With a gentle whine, the robot collapsed lifelessly, Harry already running on down the street.

_I guess they wanted to make sure that students whose quirks aren't suited to combat still had a shot_, he mused.

His thoughts were cut quickly short by the arrival of two new robots, one a somewhat ungainly but quick-looking thing balancing on one large wheel and bearing two wide arms, each doubling as shields and almost hiding a pair of mini-guns already priming to fire. And one of those shield-like arms bore a large, white "1".

Behind this robot, however, was a bulky, tank-looking robot bearing a pair of oversized multi-missile launchers on its "shoulders," with the number "3" helpfully emblazoned on its front.

_Man, this school doesn't mess around, does it?_ Harry thought with a grin, watching as if in slow motion as the tank-like robot shifted to the side to get a clear shot at Harry past the one-pointer, which was even now preparing to fire its double-mini-gun artillery.

_I guess that means I shouldn't, either_.

As the one-pointer began firing, Harry continued his charge, moving faster and faster as he drew more deeply on his power, making his body glow brighter as smoke and lightning rolled off of him more heavily.

Darting from side to side, he dodged the streams of bullets and continued to close the distance, the robot clearly having trouble targeting him thanks to the smoke and lighting trailing behind his quick, sporadic movements, shrouding him like a cloak and making his motions difficult to see and predict.

Upon reaching the one-pointer, however, he immediately side-stepped it and continued his charge, this time staring down the three-pointer, even as the ignored robot began spinning around to continue targeting him.

Ceasing the evasive maneuvers, Harry simply leaped at the three-pointer, watching carefully as its red eyes beeped and missiles locked on, even as he heard the ominous whine of mini-guns starting back up behind him.

Grinning, the airborne Harry reached out his left arm, and as the translucent white light faded from the limb, the brilliant emerald lightning racing up and down his arm exploded outwards, fanning out and latching on to a gleaming metal streetlight.

The robots both fired at the same time, carefully aimed at the airborne target between them … only to find their intended target yanked out of the way at the last second, the arcs of lightning snapping him towards the metal streetlight like rubber bands … and leaving both the robots to crumble under sudden friendly fire in the process.

Harry didn't spare much of a glance for the bullet-riddled three-pointer or the utterly demolished one-pointer now resting in pieces around a series of missile-made craters, though. He was already hurtling through the air over another three-pointer, lightning trailing behind him after using one arm to repel himself off the streetlight, only for his other arm to snap towards the robot beneath him, the fan of sparks gently pulling him in a narrowing arc to land lightly behind the tank-like robot.

Almost negligently slapping the nearly hidden red shutdown button, he continued his pell-mell race down the street, eyes already locked on to his next target even as more and more robots began streaming out of the alleys lining the street before him.

His grin widened as adrenaline pumped through his veins.

* * *

**The judging area**

"Well someone seems to be having fun, at least," Present Mic commented in amusement as delighted, only slightly maniacal laughter began drifting through the speakers, courtesy of a certain black-haired teenager currently tearing his way down the main boulevard, broken or deactivated robots strewn about in his wake.

"I'll say," Midnight remarked, hypnotic blue eyes riveted to the footage. "Power _and_ speed … a _delicious_ combination." She licked her lips. "I just hope he isn't too quick in _all_ his en–"

"Midnight, I swear to God, if you make another sexual pun, I'm going to throw a juice bag at your head," Aizawa tiredly informed her, his bloodshot eyes making his look of irritation even more cutting.

"Don't kink-shame me."

As Midnight narrowly ducked a hurled juice pouch, All Might simply continued to watch his protege in action.

_You know, kid, when I said you should always smile in the face of adversities … this isn't exactly what I had in mind_, he thought with some chagrin as he watched the teenager continue to laugh as he worked his way through robot after robot.

After a moment, though, a small smile worked its way back across the man's gaunt face. _But it isn't exactly a bad start, either_.

Watching the boy blur across the battlefield, he once again noted just how different the two of them were, and how nowhere was this more apparent than in the rather unique tactics the boy was making use of in this test.

When _he_ had been a student, he would have charged in fist first, smashing the robots with brute strength. By contrast, his successor barely even touched his opponents, preferring instead to use his incredible speed and agility to outmaneuver his foes and deactivate them with the shutdown switch intended for non-physical combatants, or better yet, to position his foes so that they'd take each other down for him.

Chuckling, All Might watched as the boy managed to maneuver one particularly dogged three-pointer into taking down four other opponents before it fell to friendly fire itself, the boy already moving on to another target before the robot finished hitting the pavement.

The boy's odd development of the power he had inherited seemed to reflect this difference in their mentalities perfectly. Capitalizing on the incredible agility and already almost preternatural reflexes he had displayed during the fight with the sludge villain all those months ago, the boy had demonstrated a preference for cultivating One for All's speed enhancements rather than simply replicating the ungodly strong smash attacks preferred by his mentor. The result was a truly devastating combination, especially in the hands of someone more inclined to fight with his mind as opposed to sheer brute force, perfectly evidenced by the slew of nearly untouched robots littering the street behind him.

Of course, All Might was at a bit of a loss to explain the other developments the boy had begun manifesting with One for All, even as he watched the boy use One for All's electromagnetic discharge to flit about the battlefield more agilely than ever, pulling himself towards or repelling himself away from both the robots and anything metal he could find in the environment in order to make his movements even more unpredictable to his opponents.

In all honesty, he still had no idea where this new electricity aspect of One for All had come from, or what the hell was with the glowing white light and curls of smoke the boy had suddenly started manifesting as he trained to begin harnessing the immensely powerful quirk.

Granted, One for All was incredibly versatile, and each holder tended to use it in different ways, but come on! Wasn't the protege supposed to copy the mentor? He had the same power too, after all, and _he_ had never developed lightning powers or weird glowy smoke forms!

"All Might, are you … _pouting_?" Midnight asked, sounding incredulous.

"Course I'm not pouting. I'm All Might!" he assured her in a voice that the misinformed would almost call sullen, just as they'd call his crossed arms a clear sign that he most certainly _was_ pouting.

"It would appear that we have a clear frontrunner in Battle Center C," the small, cheerful form of the school's president suddenly squeaked, watching the boy's continued carnage across multiple screens with interest, as did numerous other teachers. "But of course, an early lead is no assurance of victory. And it can sometimes convey just as many consequences as it does benefits."

"You can say that again," the teacher in the cowboy hat agreed. Even hidden behind his gas mask, his eyes were still clearly glued to the screens not currently displaying the black-haired teen's progress. "Normally, that first wave o' robots manages to spread the students out, the ones with more speed or combat-suited quirks takin' the lead, while the others move ahead more slowly. But with this kid clearin' everyone's path …"

"… There's going to be an entire class-worth of desperate candidates coming in from behind all at once," Midnight finished for him, chuckling throatily. "Which means our little frontrunner is going to find himself ganged up on, and not in the fun wa–Ow! _Dammit_, Aizawa!"

* * *

**Battle Center C**

Harry panted as he stared down another three-pointer, his brilliant green eyes gleaming with delight as he stared into its own harshly glowing red ones.

With the sound of a now deeply familiar click, the robot's camera locked on to him.

_Perfect_, he thought, making his move as the missile launchers whirred to li–

"Ballsy entrance, dude!"

Harry backpedaled in shock as the robot practically exploded in front of him, a vaguely brown-colored blur falling from the sky to drive it into the street with monstrous force before practically ricocheting back into the sky.

"_But you're not the only one who can kick some ass!_" the voice drifted back to him faintly, its source already more than a block away.

Harry blinked at the drive-by kill-stealing, finding only one thing to say.

"… Fucking what?"

Shaking off the disorienting experience, Harry shifted his focus towards another robot clanking towards hi–

"Surf's up!"

At those words, a large blob of what looked like slime flew past his ear to splash against the chest of the robot. As it did, a pink-skinned girl suddenly skated past him, her bare feet making and sliding on more of the strange goo.

Looking back at the robot, though, he was astonished to see that it had already collapsed to the ground with a massive smoking hole burned all the way through it, looking almost as if it had been splashed with one of Neville's infamous attempts at potion-making.

He wasn't left alone with these thoughts for long, however. As if that girl had opened the floodgates, the street suddenly flooded with belated competitors, and all the chaos that came with a dozen different powers being used frantically at once.

"Hyah!" one blonde girl cried, rushing past him to kick a robot in the face with what looked like hooves for feet, even as a pair of tall horns on the girl's head fired like bullets, curving through the air and embedding themselves deeply in the chest of another.

"Way to leave some for us, man!" another student complained, dodging a column of what looked like vines erupting from the street to nearly consume an almost pitiable robot as he and several others ran past searching for more.

"… Honestly, I had forgotten you guys were even here," Harry admitted, watching as his fellow candidates finally caught up and began very thoroughly destroying all his robots.

Among the sudden crush was the slender, black-haired girl he had sat next to in orientation, and as he was now discovering, those strange ear-phone jacks of hers were apparently much deadlier than they appeared. Extending and snaking through the air as if alive, they quickly embedded themselves in the bodies of robots on either side of her, both of which immediately began vibrating strangely before collapsing in pieces.

The girl never slowed down, and her bored-looking eyes barely even glanced at them.

"Alright, you know what? This is getting out of hand," Harry remarked as he targeted another robot, only for it to be immediately smashed by some redheaded girl with giant fists, and from the look of things, there were about three other candidates who had been only a heartbeat behind her in destroying it themselves.

Deciding he needed a less crowded change of venue, he began focusing his power, channeling it into his brilliantly sparking arms as he ran towards a metal streetlight.

Whipping out one arm, he allowed several arcs of lightning to latch themselves onto the streetlight, quickly yanking him towards it like metal to a supercharged magnet. As he raced towards it, however, he carefully lowered the voltage just enough that he'd swing past it rather than slam into it, his insane momentum trying to make his head snap back.

And just before he reached the peak of the arc, he struck the pole with the opposite voltage he had stored up in the other arm.

He couldn't hold back the laugh of utter delight as he was flung into the air like a stone from a trebuchet, wind screaming past his ears and making his eyes water as he quickly cleared the rooftops, nothing above him but pure, blue sky.

Just as it had every time since he first started practicing the technique, the incredible experience felt bittersweet as he reveled in the closest he would probably ever come to what may be the thing he missed most from his old life. The one thing he had always felt pride in excelling at, and the only place where he had always felt truly at home, no matter what was happening on the ground.

Flying.

But he didn't really have time to think about that now. As his rapid ascent finally began to slow, he carefully studied the sprawling city beneath him, once more calling on his vast experience as a seeker as he quickly scanned for targets.

Preferably those that weren't already being mobbed by a horde of angry students, if he could find it.

After a moment, his rapidly shifting eyes stilled, and a smile spread across his face.

_Bing_o.

Off to his right, and several blocks away, was an intersection teeming with robots that his competitors, lacking his bird's eye view, had yet to find.

Reaching the peak of his arc, his body continued to move forwards, but it no longer rose, holding him in that brief, weightless moment that precedes a fall. As it did, Harry finally lost his smile, the lines of his face tightening in concentration.

As he slowly began to be drawn back to earth, the soft, glimmering white light that shimmered just over the surface of his skin began to flow, drawn away from the distant parts of his body and instead gathering at his arms and upper back, which steadily began to glow brighter.

As he started to pick up speed, hurtling faster and faster towards the rooftops below him, his arms and back began to glow a solid white, as if they had been painted in liquid light that even now curled with shining, whirling white smoke so thick, it trailed behind him like the tail of some strange meteor.

It was an effect he wasn't exactly unfamiliar with, even if he'd certainly been surprised to see it coming from himself back when it first started manifesting all those months ago.

As wind began racing through his hair, he slowly drew his arms across his chest, eyes focused intensely on his target.

_Do or die, Harry_, he told himself, knowing he had only one shot to get this right.

Gritting his teeth in effort—and in pained anticipation—he snapped his arms outwards.

… arms flooded with the power of One for All, and moving at the speed of sound.

The force of the backlash slammed into him like a truck, rocketing him forward as he was nearly deafened by the colossal boom created by the motion's sudden shockwave, and the force of the air it displaced just behind him.

As if that wasn't enough, though, the brilliant white energy coating and protecting his arms and back shattered like glass at the move, instantly buffeting him with a second shockwave as the torrents of brilliant green lightning generated by One for All were suddenly released all at once, ripping through the sky and flinging him forward even faster.

To those watching from below, it likely looked somewhat like a brilliant white thundercloud had suddenly exploded as crackling green lightning lit up the sky, flinging some poor jackass through the air in its wake.

Grimacing, Harry forced himself to ignore the stabbing pain coursing up and down each arm, and the way the wind whistled as it raced through his tattered and charred shirt. At the moment, he considered it far more important to make sure all that hadn't been for nothing, and so he pried open his watery eyes.

"Oh, thank God," he muttered, the words nearly ripped from his mouth. He didn't care, though. All that mattered was that he was indeed hurtling towards the intersection he had been aiming for.

This quirk he had inherited was finicky, after all. Even in the simplest of situations, it wasn't exactly the easiest thing to regulate its power level so that you had enough to do what you needed to, but not so much that you tore your own body apart in the process.

But it was a whole different animal to try and use it to navigate in the air, where using even just a little too much power or not quite enough could mean over- or undershooting your target, and potentially slamming into a wall for your troubles.

"I guess my flying talent is still useful after all," he laughed, practically swallowing his own words from the force of the wind ripping past his face as he hurtled towards the intersection. But that couldn't stop the wide grin that spread once more across his face.

Focusing inwards, he began drawing the power back out, his muscles slowly starting to spark with electricity as his skin once again began glowing with the protective white energy that helped to support his body, and to contain the immense power constantly trying to tear it apart.

Curling white smoke trailing from his body, he raced towards the ground, and the dense crush of robots that littered it. As he did, he pushed his power into overdrive, his skin glowing brighter as the white light grew denser, and the brilliant green lightning stopped being able to escape it at all.

His body burned and groaned under the strain of the immense power rushing through it, but so long as he didn't actually try and use the overcharged muscles to move any part of his body, he could handle it without breaking himself.

Briefly.

… Mostly.

As the ground raced closer and closer, he watched the robots' countless red-glowing cameras lift towards the sky, taking in the sight of the brilliantly glowing teen recklessly racing towards them.

Maybe it was just him, but they almost seemed surprised at the sight.

Several of them raised their weapons and began to take aim at the flying teenager, but it was too late. Only meters from the pavement, he surrendered his control of the brilliant white energy encasing him, and in the process, unleashed the wild torrents of power it had been containing.

**WHOOMF**

The immense wave of energy tore through the air in a brilliant green wall of unrelenting force, followed quickly by the sound of shearing metal and shattering glass as the whole area was flooded with blinding light.

As the flash of light slowly faded, Harry dropped heavily to the ground, lying there motionless as his body suffered the inevitable recoil that comes from using such a technique.

In a word, _Pain_.

Groaning, Harry flipped himself over onto his back, blinking hard as he tried to will the spots to fade from his vision.

They weren't particularly obedient, though.

When they finally did start to leave him alone—slowly and very much at their own pace, of course—he groaned and achingly sat up, staring in interest at the decidedly empty intersection around him.

Well, empty except for wreckage, that is. All around him, countless mangled piles of shattered green robots rose from the pavement like mole hills, sprinkled here and there with demolished streetlights and shattered glass from the newly empty windowpanes in the buildings all around.

"Not too shabby," he croaked, nodding jerkily in satisfaction at the cadre of destroyed robots.

As he climbed to his feet, however, a thought suddenly occurred to him.

"Shit, we weren't supposed to minimize the collateral damage to the area, were we?"

After a moment, though, he simply shrugged. "Meh. If they didn't bother to tell us to, it must not have mattered that much to them."

As he turned to begin slowly hobbling down the street in search of more robots, though, he grimaced in pain.

"You know, I think I may have pulled something there," he flippantly snorted, only to groan as a sharp throb of pain flashed through his entire body, his muscles and limbs aching as if they'd been pulled on a rack. "Okay, yeah, not just 'something'. That is definitely an 'everything' injury."

However, pain or no pain, a grin still spread across his face as he limped away.

"Worth it!"

* * *

**The judging area**

"…"

"…"

"…"

"… so that just happened."

* * *

**Battle Center C**

As Harry loped down the street, he slowly yet steadily drew his power back out, needing to be ready no matter how much his aching body protested.

His timing turned out to be impeccable, as the street in front of him suddenly exploded with action, a redheaded candidate with oddly angled skin tumbling across the ground followed by a near avalanche of two-pointer robots.

"You think you're tough, you overgrown toasters?" the kid called out, rolling to his feet and staring down the army of machines. "You're nothing! A real man can handle any adversity! So come at me!"

The boy's proclamation was followed by a sharp-toothed grin as he crossed his arms, sparks flying as his apparently rock-hard skin grew tougher.

The robots gladly accepted his invitation.

En masse.

"Crap! I meant one at a time!" the boy yelped as he slowly started to be buried under a veritable dog-pile of the spidery metal robots.

Harry immediately stepped forward, preparing to throw himself at the robots burying the guy, but the sharp stab of pain that raced through his body made him give that plan a second thought.

But then he spotted the boy's ankle sticking out of the metal dog-pile, his strangely angled skin apparently still rock hard and nearly unbreakable.

And Harry had a delightful idea.

The red-haired kid's manly roar as he was slowly crushed by the dense weight of the robots suddenly turned into a high-pitched yelp of surprise as something abruptly dragged him out of the pile by his ankle … and then proceeded to use him as a human-shaped club to smash the robots.

"What the craaa_aaaap!_" he screamed as he was batted back and forth, smashing through robot after robot before he suddenly started to be spun around and around, his rock-hard body crashing into and through the machines like a propeller before the grip on his ankle abruptly vanished, and he was left to hurtle into and through the last several robots with an almighty crash and a less almighty shriek.

For several moments, he simply lay there, before finally, groaning from a full-body ache, he dug his way out of the tangle of metal and stared at the new-made robot graveyard filling the street, and the panting and gently laughing teen standing across from him.

"What the hell, man?!" he demanded, a shocked and almost offended look on his face. "Did you just … use me as a baseball bat to destroy the robots?!"

"Uh, first of all, you're welcome, and second of all, I prefer to call it 'teamwork'," the faintly glowing and sparking teen responded with a shameless grin.

"'Teamwork'?" he yelped indignantly. "You used me as a weapon!"

"Exactly. You and me. Working together to destroy the robots. Ergo, teamwork," the boy explained as if it was obvious, already continuing his lope down the street.

Shaking off the last of the wreckage, Kirishima ran after him.

"How the hell are they even going to score that?" he asked, bewildered at the experience of being saved by someone … who then used him as a freaking club.

"Ah, let the judges worry about that," the green-eyed boy told him as they ran down the street.

* * *

**The judging area**

"… How _are_ we going to score that?" Midnight asked, a thoughtful but confused look on her face.

"Well, I mean … the rock-skinned boy's body _is_ technically what smashed the robots …," Present Mic suggested.

"Yes, but it was the other boy's actions that led to the smashing," Midnight argued, a pondering look in her eye.

"Only indirectly. It was rock-kid's quirk that did the smashing itself," Present Mic bit back, this time a bit more firmly.

"With the other being the one to control and direct it," Midnight claimed, just a tad more heatedly herself.

_This is clearly going to go on for a while_, All Might thought in consternation as the back and forth between those two continued to pick up steam.

* * *

**Battle Center C**

"Damn it! How am I supposed to keep track of what my score is anymore if I don't know whether those robots counted as my kills or yours?!" Kirishima complained, smashing through a three-pointer like a human bulldozer.

"Wait, you were keeping track?" Harry asked in surprise, sidestepping a one-pointer and tricking it into firing on two more of its fellows before he gently tapped its shutdown button.

"Yo– … you mean you're not?" the rock-skinned candidate asked in even greater surprise.

"Course not. I'm more focused on killing these things," Harry answered, running and sliding between the legs of a spidery two-pointer just as its tail shattered the concrete where he'd been standing. Moments later, the robot collapsed to the ground lifelessly, courtesy of its shutdown button, and just in time, too, as a pair of horns flew through the air where its chest had just been, nearly giving the points for the kill to someone else.

"Oh. Well, that's … kinda manly, I guess," the redheaded boy admitted almost sheepishly, hurriedly smashing another robot just before a strange, shadowy bird creature could carve into it for another candidate.

As the test ran closer towards its conclusion, and the supply of robots started to run thin, more and more of the students had started to converge on the same areas, now actively competing against each other to snag more points and up their score.

His still aching body not really feeling up to another attempt at aerial insanity, Harry decided to just roll with it this time, relying on his speed and agility not just to defeat the robots, but now to outmaneuver his fellow candidates as well.

However, as their time came closer to running out, many of the students began making increasingly reckless and desperate bids to manage just a few more points, sometimes to disastrous results.

"Crap!" Kirishima yelled, running and throwing himself in front of one such student, who had been injured in their attempt to take down a three-pointer, and was moments away from taking a full missile barrage to the face before Kirishima stepped in to take the brunt with his rock-hard skin. "What is with this freaking test?" he yelled after Harry managed to neutralize the robot with its killswitch. "Someone could get killed here! Aren't these things being held back at all?!"

"Of course they are," Harry defended, even as he watched the redheaded girl from before use her giant hands to shield an injured student from the bullets of a one-pointer, while at the same time, another pair of injured candidates were pulled out of the line of fire of a three-pointer by a massive tangle of vines that seemed to flow from another girl's hair. "I mean, I'm sure the teachers are paying close attention and making sure the robots don't outright _kill_ anyone.

"… Right?"

* * *

**The judging area**

"Being used as a tool is not the same as defeating the opponent!" Midnight yelled.

"_The kid's quirk is his body, and his body was used to defeat the robots! Ergo, it's his kill!_" Present Mic shouted back, his quirk starting to up his volume more and more.

"Oh really, Mic? And what's next in that line of reasoning? Will you be informing baseball players that it's actually the _bat_ that should be receiving all the credit for hitting the ball?!"

"_A person is not the same as a baseball bat!_"

"Did you see the clip?!"

A soft, squeaky sigh sounded from the back of the room. "I suppose it is good to see such passion and fervor from our teachers, even if it _can_ grow just a bit … tiresome."

All Might chuckled, having moved to the array of monitors next to the principal to avoid the … "passion and fervor" … of the debating duo.

After all, he needed to focus if he wanted to follow how young Harry was doing in his test.

"You seem rather pleased with the candidates' progress, All Might," Principal Nezu noted, clearly spotting the way All Might's eyes barely left his monitor … as well as the proud smile he couldn't quite seem to keep hidden.

"Well, they're … doing rather well, don't you think?" All Might answered somewhat nervously, sweating faintly at the prospect of trying to hide his particular interest in young Harry from the incredibly intelligent and inquisitive mind of the principal.

The principal nodded. "Yes, we seem quite fortunate in having drawn such a talented group of candidates this year. All of them have managed to make a rather fine showing of themselves thus far." The principal's perpetual smile seemed as pleased as it always did, but as he reached for a clear casing covering a large, red button, the sudden glint in his eyes spoke of a manic, bloodthirsty delight. "But the real test has yet to come! Let us see how these fine young men and women fair when faced with _real _danger!"

The principal's manic giggle as he pressed the infamous Yaruki switch sent a shiver down All Might's spine.

Turning back to his monitors, All Might watched the video bounce and jump thanks to some monstrous impacts making the distant cameras tremble as if caught in an earthquake. And the proud, pleased smile finally faded from his lips, replaced by an expression of sheer nerves.

And hope.

_Come on, kid_, he thought determinedly, trying to will his encouragement to his apprentice. _Show them all what you can do!_

* * *

**Battle Center C**

For a moment, Harry wondered if the sudden massive impacts shaking the fake city were the result of that same crazed-looking candidate that had smashed that robot in front of him earlier. But as the vibrations grew strong enough to start cracking the glass in the windows of the buildings around them, even with the source still too far away to be seen, he realized this was something else.

It was something … _bigger_.

"What the crap's going on? Is this an earthquake?" Kirishima yelled, joining all the other alarmed candidates in looking around in a panic.

In answer, an absolutely _titanic_ metal hand suddenly reached across the skyline to palm the entire roof of a tower, and an utter mountain of army-green metal rolled into view, the sheer _weight_ of its presence and the force of its slow, relentless movements causing the buildings around it to crumble and fall.

"That's … that's the _zero-pointer_?!" Kirishima yelped in both horror and outrage as candidates all around them began screaming in terror.

Sure enough, once one could manage to see the thing as anything other than a pure tidal wave of candidate-crushing metal, it did indeed match the profile of the robot they'd been told would be worth zero points, and would appear as a kind of "hurdle they should try to avoid."

Eyes wide, Harry leaned father and farther _and farther_ back in order to take in the colossal size of this ungodly behemoth, which could only by the loosest and most sadistic of interpretations be called something as underwhelming as a "hurdle."

"So," he muttered, "… this is it … the big one … the one we've all been waiting for." His eyes narrowed. "I'm starting to think that the people in charge of this test don't care for us all that much."

"What are you just standing around for, dude?! RUN!" the red-haired boy yelled in a panic, joining the mad rush of terrified students as they began fleeing the metal juggernaut.

However, before he could take a step himself, the modern-day Talos raised a fist the size of a large house and brought it crashing down on a building's rooftop, causing students to scream as the ground shook and rubble the size of cars rained down around them.

Harry was buffeted by panicked students fleeing like deer from a forest fire, but he stood his ground, horrified eyes focused not on the colossal mass of steel, but on the ground in front of it.

Because there, hidden somewhere in the swirling fog of dust kicked up by the thing's attack, he had just heard someone give a shrill, desperate cry.

"_Help!_"

"What th– where are you going?! You tryin' to get yourself _killed_?!"

He barely even registered the redheaded boy's voice behind him. Power coursing through his veins, he sprinted towards the zero-pointer, and the cloud of dust the cry had come from.

The sky grew dark as the robot drew closer, rolling forward on two tank-like treds that ate through the pavement like garbage disposals the size of buses, but Harry simply drew on his power more deeply, the crackling white sheen coating his skin growing blinding as he rushed forward, smoke and lightning trailing behind his movements.

As Harry entered the cloud of dust, the air began vibrating with the groaning creak of shifting metal, the robotic monstrosity cocking back its colossal arm and preparing to attack again … but it wasn't Harry that those burning red eyes were focused on.

Just then, though, the dust finally shifted, and Harry caught sight of the source of the cry … and clearly the robot's intended target.

It was that pink-skinned girl he had seen earlier, and carried on her back was that black-haired girl with the weird earphone jacks, only her scalp was bleeding as her head lolled on the girl's shoulder, her eyes open, but confused and unfocused.

Worse, though, the pink-skinned girl carrying her was hurt too, limping from what looked like a bad cut on the bottom of her bare foot, given the bloody footsteps she was leaving behind her.

With her foot like that, and with the other girl on her back, she had no chance of outrunning the zero-pointer. And she clearly knew it. But she still refused to let the other girl go, even as tears flowed down her utterly petrified face. Above her, the ominous clanking coming from the robot's arm came to an abrupt and terrifying end as it finished preparing its attack, its burning, soulless red eyes locked mercilessly on the girls' puny forms.

In that moment, those eyes reminded Harry of Voldemort's.

With horrifying suddenness, that fist finally moved, roaring through the air with a speed that nothing that size had any right to possess as it careened towards the girls with massive, ungodly power.

The force of the impact created a windstorm that blasted the cloud of dust away and shattered every remaining window in the area.

And tossed aside by that horrendous windblast were the two girls, yelping in alarm and confusion as they were blown about like plastic bags before crashing painfully to the shattered pavement.

The pink-skinned girl recovered first, shrugging off the bruises on top of bruises as she sat up and tried to process just what had happened and how she was still alive. And as she looked back at the giant robot, and what was left of the ground in front of it, she got her answer.

There, white light pouring off every inch of his smoking skin, Harry Potter stood, teeth clenched in fury and agony as he held back that colossal fist with cracking, wavering arms.

And did not move.

"_Ruuuunnn!_" he yelled, the monstrous power behind the enormous metal fist driving it closer and closer towards him, even as his power tore through his body as he fought back. "_I can't hold this thing back forever! GOOOOO!_"

Agony lanced through his mind as the bus-size treds beneath the mountainous robot began churning, adding even more force to the unrelenting power trying to crush him. He could practically hear his bones cracking and breaking as One for All forced his body leagues past his limits, but he couldn't let up. If he tried letting go, this thing would crush him, and the girls would be shortly behind him.

All he could do was buy them some time to get clear.

Whatever it took.

Roaring, he pulled even more of One for All into his body, the blinding white light coating his body constantly shattering and reforming as it tried desperately to hold him together, wild torrents of green lightning tearing their way free and scorching the crumbling pavement around him, but he held on. His vision turned red and his body shrieked with pain, but his bleeding hands never wavered as they carved into the torso-thick fingers of the robot's metal fist.

But then things went very, very wrong.

Blobs of acid began to splatter against the robot's body as the pink-skinned girl stepped forward, teeth bared in terror and determination as she gave her all in attacking the monstrous robot, even though her attacks seemed about as effective as chucking pebbles at a mountain.

"… _no … run_," he tried to tell her, voice weak with the strain of holding back the robot's arm.

She apparently heard him anyway.

"You think I'm gonna just leave you here to die?!" she demanded, sounding outraged and furious. "What kind of hero could do something like that?!"

Her lip trembled and her hands shook, but she never paused in her attacks as she spoke, and she showed no sign of planning to, either, despite the sheer terror etched into every line of her face.

Harry's eyes widened as the fist he was straining against suddenly started vibrating and seemed to be growing weaker. Turning his head to the other side, he saw the black-haired girl stepping forward, the ends of her strange earphone jacks embedded in the robot's arm.

"What she said," she said flatly, her eyes no longer unfocused, or bored, but narrowed in relentless determination as she glared up at the gleaming red eyes of the robot.

However, whatever she was doing to weaken the robot's train-sized arm wasn't enough. With a series of grinding metallic clangs, the arm suddenly straightened, all the joints locking in place as the robot's torso began to slowly pivot, using its body to make up for the lessened strength in its arm as it continued to ruthlessly drive the struggling teenager into the ground.

Groaning, Harry found himself forced to his knees, the fist almost flush against his chest as he put everything he had into holding it back … and came up wanting.

_It's not enough_, the thought echoed through his desperate, pain-filled haze. _I can't hold it back much longer … and when it's done with me, it'll go after them_.

Looking up, he felt his body turn cold with dread as he saw the robot begin lifting its left arm in the air, clearly preparing to end things once and for all.

Harry could do nothing more than look on in horror.

"EAT THIS!"

Out of nowhere, the robot reeled as a brown-colored blur collided with its face with monstrous force, slightly denting its flat green head before hurtling towards the ground and landing with a thunderous crash.

Harry blinked as he stared at the strange sight, pain almost forgotten in his astonishment.

"What? Didn't I tell you that you weren't the only one who could kick some ass?" the white-haired girl asked him, a manic, bloodthirsty grin on her dark-skinned face.

Her tall, snow-white rabbit ears twitched in excitement at her own words.

Before he could answer, she leaped back into the air, hurtling towards the side of a building before bouncing off with enough strength to leave a crater. Another dent bloomed on the side of the robot's head as she slammed into it with an utterly monstrous kick, her large rabbit feet striking with all the force of a bomb.

Reeling, the gargantuan robot tried to lift its left hand to crush her.

Tried … and failed.

Harry honestly didn't know who was more astonished to see the massive column of vines entangling the hand, him or the robot.

"I'm afraid I don't much care for violence," a soft, gentle voice suddenly spoke, "but I will do what I must to protect those in need."

Harry stared as a girl stepped forward with her hands clasped as if in prayer, and her vivid green hair made of what looked like thorny vines suddenly drove into the pavement, followed seconds later by another massive column rising up to retrap the robot's hand just as it tore free of her previous attack, all while the robot's head suffered a constant barrage of attacks from the white-haired girl, who bounced from floor to wall to face like a wildly laughing and happily cursing tennis ball.

However, as the robot shifted, trying to keep track of all its attackers, part of its torso tore through the side of a building, sending a veritable meteor shower of rubble screaming towards them, and as Harry watched in helpless terror, one of those massive pieces of concrete hurtled straight towards the girl with the earphone jacks, who still looked unsteady on her feet, and wouldn't be able to dodge.

Harry tried to scream out a warning anyway, despite knowing it would be too late, but it was no good. Even as he opened his mouth, he watched as the rubble struck and shattered … and when the dust cleared, it revealed the unbreakable form of Kirishima, wrapped tightly around the girl's body like a protective, red-haired statue.

"Sorry we're late! But we don't all have superspeed, you know!" the boy apologized with a sharp-toothed grin, stepping back from the wide-eyed girl and nodding towards the other side of the street.

Turning his head, Harry saw a massive hand protecting the pink-skinned girl from the cascading rubble as well, wielded by the redheaded girl he had noticed earlier.

And she wasn't alone.

In amazement, he watched as the street suddenly filled with even more students, every single one of them stepping forward and putting their dreams of attending UA, and even their very lives, on the line to try and defeat this unstoppable monster, all for the chance to save people they had never even met.

"Take that, villain!" the blonde-haired girl with horse-hooves yelled in heavily accented Japanese, horns firing from her head to start ruthlessly shattering each of the robot's glowing red eyes one after another, leaving the thing's head reeling in confusion, made worse by the cackling rabbit girl's relentless attacks.

"Dark shadow! Do what you can!" a boy with what looked like a bird head, of all things, yelled out, followed by the shadowy bird monster Harry had noticed before blasting out of the boy's body, flying forward to attack the robot while still connected to the boy with a shadowy tether.

The redheaded girl with the giant fists didn't bother with words as she leaped into action, landing blow after blow on the robot's body with what looked like surprisingly massive force, leaving dents the size of cars wherever her blows struck, giving her all to help beat this near unbeatable foe.

"_You all … came …_," Harry remarked, almost speechless, the incredible agony of his slowly breaking body practically forgotten even as the giant metal fist continued to try and crush him into the pavement.

"Of course we did!" Kirishima yelled in response, blocking another cascade of rubble from the building being crushed by the struggling, nearly blinded robot. "Watching you charge in to save those girls, seeing what you were going through to stop this thing … forget being heroes! What kind of man … what kind of _person_ … could just stand back and do nothing after seeing that?!"

Harry's eyes widened as he remembered his words to All Might all those months ago.

'_I want to help make a world where stepping forward to help someone in need isn't considered heroic; it's just considered … _normal. _I want to see a world where standing back and doing nothing when someone is in trouble is what's considered unusual.'_

_It's already happening_, he realized, staring out at the students in amazement. _That dream … it's really possible. And it's _starting.

With this realization, a powerful flame was kindled in his heart.

"_Pinky!_" he shouted, doubling his efforts to hold back the giant fist as the acid-making girl looked at him in surprise. "_The torso! Above the treds!_" His skin grew brighter as he pulled more deeply on his power, forcing his crumbling, smoking body to obey him whether it wanted to or not. "_Weak point!_"

He saw confusion in the girl's eyes as she turned back to the robot … and he saw realization blossom as she spotted what he was talking about.

The torso of the robot was an utter mountain of metal armor … but just above the treds of its lower body, that torso drew together like an hourglass, narrowing to allow the robot to bend and twist … like it was now doing as Harry pushed back against its unyielding arm.

And that narrow point was _vulnerable_.

Teeth grit in determination, the girl began pushing her attacks into overdrive, each one of them now focused on the narrowest point of the thing's body, which smoked and grew thinner with every splash of acid.

The air filled with the grind of metal and a roar of herculean effort as the enormous metal body slowly began to shift, pushed back inch after monumental inch as Harry relentlessly forced himself off his knees, even if it meant moving a mountain.

All these people were risking their lives to help him. He _refused_ to insult them by remaining on his knees any longer!

They were willing to stand beside him, so he would do the same in return!

_No matter what it took!_

"_Birdman! Rocky!_" he roared next. The ground cracked and crumbled beneath his shaking feet as he continued to push back against the unrelenting force of the robot's strength, but his knees did not bend. They _would_ not! "_Same target!_"

The rock-skinned teen and the one with the shadowy bird monster stared at the acid-drenched target in question.

Acid that their powers made them immune to.

"Understood!" the raven-headed teen replied. "Dark Shadow! Go!"

"_Going!_" the shadowy beast answered, already flying towards the weakening base of the robot's body, which it ruthlessly began tearing apart with massive swings of its shadowy claws.

"On it!" Kirishima yelled too, pounding his fists as he hardened his angular skin further. With a ferocious yell, he leaped onto the base of the robot and began relentlessly smashing it with his nearly unbreakable fists, ignoring the backsplashes of acid that splattered against him as the pink-skinned girl continued attacking it as well.

"We've got this too!" the redheaded girl with giant fists shouted. "Pony! Hit it!"

"Okay!" the girl with horns yelled back, taking aim and firing over and over at the slowly crumbling base of the robot, her bullet-like horns sinking deep and shredding it further.

At the same time, the redheaded girl clambered on to the other side of the robot's base and began pounding it again and again with the monstrous force offered by her enormous fists.

_Almost_, Harry thought, wavering as he held on just a few seconds longer. He watched the robot's base grow weaker and narrower under the students' combined attacks, saw the blinded robot's head constantly jerking about under the white-haired girl's bouncing solo assault, keeping it distracted. He watched the black-haired girl beside him clench her teeth as she continued to force her power into the earphone jacks embedded in the monstrosity's arm, weakening it enough for him to hang on. And on the other side of the street, the vine-haired girl was still relentlessly creating one after another of the massive columns of vines in order to keep the robot's other arm trapped, even as she wavered on her feet, looking pale.

_I don't care if this test says you failed_, Harry thought, drawing on his power more deeply than he ever had before. _Every single one of you is a hero_. His shattered bones ground together, and his skin burned and smoked as it was oversaturated with power, but a wide, proud grin still spread across his face.

_I'm honored to stand beside you_.

With a thunderous crack, the narrow, shredded base of the mountainous robot finally split, sending the attackers leaping back in alarm as the titanic mass of metal shifted, and started to fall.

But Harry didn't let go.

His ears suddenly echoed with All Might's words to him, spoken many months ago.

'_A hero's job is to be larger than life, and stronger than fate!' the Symbol of Peace told him. 'When all the evil of the world is trying to crush you, it's a hero's job to stand up! And to take another step!'_

Pavement crumbled like glass as his left foot moved back, planted with all the force of his conviction, and his absolute refusal to yield to the impossible as he tightened his grip on the metal fist, and slowly began to pivot his body.

'_A true hero's strength doesn't come from muscles, or from quirks, but from belief! It is their determination to win, whatever it takes, that makes them mighty! And it is their refusal to surrender, no matter the cost, that makes them a legend!'_

The street grew dark as night as the air shook with the sound of groaning steel, the robot's colossal metal body filling the sky and blocking the sun as it soared overhead, but the brilliant white light pouring from Harry's skin never wavered, and the fingers digging deep into the metal fist never loosened.

'_A true hero doesn't believe in limits! Doesn't believe in impossible! That's what it means to be a Symbol of Peace! That's what it means to Go Beyond!'_

"**PLUS … _ULTRAAAAAAA!_"**

The thunderous crash made the pavement jump and buildings buckle as it rocked the area, the monstrous metal body slamming into the ground with titanic force, creating a hurricane of wind and force that knocked the slack-jawed students off their feet as dust filled the air like fog.

As things settled, and finally grew quiet, one by one, the astonished students slowly climbed back to their feet, eyes wide and disbelieving as they stared into the roiling cloud of dust. But as it slowly shifted, it revealed Harry's brilliantly glowing form, panting and hunched, but still standing.

And beyond him, the mountain of metal that was the zero-pointer's body lay motionless, driven deep into a crater nearly a city-block in size.

"_Holy fuck_," the white-haired rabbit girl breathed in astonishment. "Did he just … _judo throw_ … the zero-pointer?"

Kirishima's rock-hard skin slowly turned normal as he stared at the incredible sight. "… yeah," he answered simply, not believing it himself.

However, everyone's eyes were quickly drawn from the mountain of metal and back to Harry as the glowing teen wavered on his feet. Without further warning, the teen finally fell to his knees before collapsing to the street, the brilliant energy coating his skin finally dissipating.

The gathered students gasped in horror as the sight that was revealed.

His limbs splayed out loosely on the pavement like water balloons, as if every bone within them had been absolutely pulverized. Worse, nearly every inch of the teen's skin was a mottled purple like some nauseating, full-body bruise. And as if that wasn't enough, wide burn marks arched and zigzagged across the entire surface of his body, some of them still giving off faint curls of smoke.

However, while nearly everyone froze at the ghastly, stomach-turning sight, the pink-skinned acid girl ran forward in a panic.

"Oh God, oh God, please don't be dead! Please please please!" she chanted, throwing herself to her knees next to him, but as she reached out to roll him onto his back, her hands froze, unable to find a safe place to touch him, given how every single inch of him was so badly injured. "Oh God, I don't know what to do! Are you oka– … I– … _does anyone know his name?! Please!_"

The crying girl was nearly hyperventilating at this point, unable to figure out how to help him. However, a faint, sudden noise from the face-down teen halted her near anxiety attack in its tracks.

"What was that?" she asked, leaning closer to him.

"… _my name … is Harry Potter …_," he weakly groaned, voice muffed by the pavement.

Her watery eyes blinked in shock as a bright, relieved smile spread across her face. "I'm Mina Ashido," she reflexively told him, not even thinking.

"… _nice to meet you … Mina Ashido …_," he groaned, eyes clenched tight in pain. "…_ could you … do me a favor, please … and call me an ambulance? … I think I … may need a hospital …_"

A broken, sobbing laugh broke loose from the emotionally overwhelmed girl at those words, but before she could answer, another voice suddenly sounded out through speakers placed throughout the city.

"_Uh … time's up for the test_," Present Mic's sounded out, almost sheepishly. "_And, um … medical treatment is on its way …_"

"… _thank you …_" Harry whispered faintly. "_… until they get here … could someone please just … knock me unconscious or something? … you have no idea how bad this hurts …_"

All of a sudden, peals of relieved, emotionally drained laughter echoed out across the shattered street, the adrenaline-fatigued teens collapsing to the ground or staggering into each other as their bodies reminded them of their exhaustion, and were promptly ignored. The teens were too busy relishing the fact that the horrible fight was finally over to care about something so petty, and even the most dour among them couldn't help but break out in a wide, brilliant smile.

As the teens all laughed in celebration, cheering not only their victory, but the simple fact that they were alive, Harry's pained groans were very thoroughly drowned out.

* * *

**The judging area **

Silence once more reigned in the darkened room, broken only by the sound of carefree laughter echoing from the speakers.

And the sharp crackle of sparks from the destroyed monitor in front of Principal Nezu, smashed by the fully formed fist of All Might, who even now was glaring at the diminutive principal with an almost murderous glint in his glowing blue eyes.

"All Might …," Midnight called out softly, like someone trying to soothe a wild animal.

"**Why didn't you stop the test?!"** All Might demanded furiously, fist tightening in rage. **"You saw what that thing was doing to them! What it almost managed to do! Why wouldn't you shut it down?!"**

"All Might, please calm dow–"

"**Explain!"** All Might shouted, ignoring Midnight's words, as well as the way she was slowly stepping towards him, fingers pinching the thin fabric of her costume, and clearly preparing to tear it in order to use her quirk to stop him.

However, All Might's eyes didn't move from the principal, who remained calmly seated, the gentle, pleased smile still on his face just as it always was.

"I would be happy to do so, All Might," the president informed him, his voice as calm and chipper as ever. "However, I tend to find that conversations work best when both parties are seated, as this usually means they are truly willing to listen. And to understand."

After several tense moments, All Might gradually took his seat, body tense, but less hostile.

"Thank you, All Might," the fuzzy president told him, sounding more pleased than ever. "Now, as for why I refused to shut down the zero-point villain robot, despite you and several of the others very vocally insisting that I do so, well, the answer is really quite simple! I did not see the students as being in any real danger!"

All Might's hand tightened on his knee as he fought his impulse to leap to his feet and curse at the president, but his head won out, and his grip relaxed.

He wouldn't learn anything if he didn't let Nezu explain, after all.

The mouse-like president's beady black eyes twinkled merrily at him, clearly noticing his momentary struggle, and silently congratulating him on his triumph over it.

"As I said, I did not see the students as being in any real danger," Nezu continued. "There are several reasons why this is, but the most prominent among them would have to be the simple fact that the robot is very precisely programmed to make such a thing completely impossible!" All Might blinked at him, trying to reconcile the president's statement, and his clear and unshaken faith in it, with what they had both seen in the footage.

"Allow me to explain," the president proceeded. "The machine is designed to put up a good show, without a doubt. Its sheer size makes it so terrifying to the candidates that it keeps them from noticing, but the robot very rarely makes any direct attacks against them. Its standard modus operandi is to attack the ground around them, or the buildings above them, doing everything it can to use its incredible size and strength to terrorize the students, as per the parameters of the test. However, _because_ of its incredible size, and the danger this inherently poses, it is also designed with multiple redundant safeties to ensure the students' safety is as assured as possible … even if they do run the risk of receiving a degree of injuries from the rubble flung about by its attacks, a regrettably uncontrollable variable. When the robot _does_ attack a student directly, though, it does so under only the precisest feedback from the most advanced analytical software currently available … which I had a hand in developing, actually. As such, it applies exactly enough force to match and slightly exceed the force used against it, all with the intention of making the students feel they are up against an opponent far more powerful than they are, so as to reveal their likely reactions against such a villain in the future, but also to guarantee their physical safety. The robot's actions would cease completely the moment the student lost or surrendered the struggle." Nezu nodded towards a monitor. "You may notice that young Mr. Potter's injuries occurred not as a result of the robot's attack, but due to the backlash of his own power, and his steadfast refusal to yield in his struggle against the machine. Had he done so, he would have found the robot's attack halting in its entirety, as per the safeties with which it was designed."

For a moment, a more intense look flashed through Nezu's eyes as he met All Might's, made all the more severe by the long, jagged scar over the principal's right eye. "In addition, I would also like to point out that I was watching the confrontation with exquisite care, and all of the considerable resources that my unique faculties can provide. The safety of my students, even those not yet officially enrolled in my school, is my utmost priority. And I would have halted the exam in an instant were I to be at all uncertain that this safety could be guaranteed."

All Might felt himself growing sheepish as he took in the president's final words. Nezu's quirk, High Spec, made him an unparalleled genius, leagues beyond anyone else. With his mind, he could study almost any scenario and predict with terrifying accuracy the exact chain of events that would transpire … or even create those chain reactions himself, achieving exactly the desired outcome with only the smallest of actions from himself, and all with the same ease with which someone else might make a cup of tea.

With him watching that fight, there truly was no question that the students' safety had been as guaranteed as it could possibly be.

"**Apologies, sir,"** All Might said, already deeply regretting his actions, and his hasty assumption that the president was simply being reckless with the students' safety.

And with Harry's.

"It is quite all right, All Might," Nezu told him cheerfully. "If there is one thing I would never fault anyone for, it is a concern for the safety of our students! You have nothing to apologize for!" Hopping up from his seat, the diminutive president gently strolled towards another monitor, calmly brushing his gleaming white fur smooth and straightening his impeccable suit. "That said, it is still regretful that young Mr. Potter was injured so gravely, even if I find myself impressed with his incredible tenacity, and his determination to ensure the safety of others, regardless of its consequences to himself."

All Might once again felt a swell of pride, even as his heart ached with worry as he looked at the monitor to see the school's elderly healer, Recovery Girl, attending to Harry's motionless form, while several other students looked on in concern.

Her quirk granted her patients an incredible boost of healing, so the fact that it was taking her so long to treat young Harry, even just to get him well enough to be moved, was not a good sign.

"However, regretful or not, I think we can all agree that this test has been highly informative, and singularly impressive, too, for the others as well as for Mr. Potter," Nezu continued, his eyes now on the various other students filling the monitor's frame.

"I'll say," Sniper replied, tipping back his cowboy hat to scratch at his scalp above his gas mask. "I ain't never seen an entire group run up against a zero-pointer like that."

"Exactly," Midnight agreed, eyes fixed on the footage herself. "It's not unheard of for a single student to try and fight the robot, or even for the zero-pointer to be defeated … but for such a large group to step forward against it together? Without even knowing each other beforehand? Not only was each one of them risking their lives, but they were also discarding the last remaining minutes of their test, and thus possibly their chances of making it into UA." She shook her head in disbelief. "That's … never happened before."

"Indeed it hasn't," Nezu agreed happily. "We are truly blessed to have such an incredible group of fledgling heroes seek to attend our school."

"Bunch of idiots, more like," Aizawa spoke up, brushing his lanky black hair away from his tired, bloodshot eyes as he stared irritably at the screen. "Not a one of them possessed the basic reasoning skills necessary to realize that obviously this test would never actually put anyone's lives in danger, and that they were throwing away the last precious minutes of their exam for nothing." He rolled his eyes. "Instead, they all charged in with nothing more than reckless passion, and without a shred of logic or foresight between them." His annoyed eyes drifted to All Might. "I'm sure you approve, though, don't you, All Might?"

All Might's teeth ground behind his smile. _You're damn right I do, Aizawa!_

"Well, even if they acted more under youthful enthusiasm than seasoned reasoning, the fact remains that each one of them demonstrated an incredibly heroic spirit, and even more impressively, a surprising aptitude for working as a team," Nezu squeaked, his smile brighter than ever. "I, for one, would very much like to see how they might develop as a group, and whether this impressive display of teamwork will prove to be just a one-time occurrence, or a talent that we might be able to nurture further, and which might even manage to spread to the rest of their classmates!" His eyes twinkled in excitement. "The capacity for teamwork is too rare a commodity in the hero world nowadays, and I'm afraid to say that the hero course has traditionally done little to encourage this to change, given how competitive it has become. So we should do all we can to prompt such seeds to sprout where we can find them! As such, I propose that every one of these students be placed within the same class!"

More than a few of the assembled teachers stared at Nezu in surprise at this proposal.

"But … we haven't even determined whether all those involved earned enough points to pass," Midnight pointed out. "Even if we reward them heavily with rescue points for their actions against the zero-pointer, we haven't fully calculated the villain points they earned for destroying robots prior to that, or any other heroic actions they may have taken that would earn them rescue points."

"I have, though," Nezu cheerfully informed her. "And I can say with a great deal of certainty that each of them earned enough points for membership to UA!"

Once again, they were all forcibly reminded of the president's incredible mind, which allowed him to store and calculate several students' scores even before the fight against the zero-pointer made anyone realize how special those students were.

"Hmm. If all of 'em get in … that'll be nine just from this fight," Present Mic counted. "Almost half a class in and of itself. A bit more than we usually draw from any one battle center, but hey! We ain't never had a showing like this before, either!"

As every teacher there slowly began nodding, on board with the plan to group the students together in the same class, and to see what could be made of them, one teacher in particular stopped the conversation cold in its tracks.

"Give them to me."

As one, everyone stared open-mouthed at Aizawa.

"**You … want them?"** All Might asked uncertainly, and with a not-inconsiderable sense of foreboding. Justifiably, too. After all, the man was an incredibly harsh taskmaster when it came to teaching, and worse, he was more than willing to expel any student who failed to live up to his incredibly demanding and utterly uncompromising expectations. In fact, just last year, he expelled every single student in his entire homeroom class, and that wasn't even an unheard-of occurrence for him.

And he had already expressed his irritation with these students.

Young Harry among them.

The perpetually exhausted-looking man stared flatly at the visibly concerned All Might. "Someone's got to temper their over-zealousness and pound some sense into their thick skulls. I'm the most logical choice. Unless you're suggesting that _you'd _be up to that particular task, All Might."

Once again, All Might ground his teeth behind his relentless smile, but said nothing.

"Splendid! I think it's a wonderful idea!" President Nezu exclaimed. "And just like that, half the roster for Class 1-A of the hero course is decided! I'm sure you will do everything you can to ensure that they and their fellow classmates grow to become the best heroes they can possibly be!"

"Without a doubt," Aizawa answered boredly, not bothering to point out that "the best heroes they can possibly be" could range anywhere from becoming the top hero in the world to becoming an accountant who occasionally dreamed of what could have been.

As for All Might, though, he continued to stare at the monitor, watching as young Harry was finally loaded onto a stretcher carried by a pair of miniature helper robots, Recovery Girl at his side. However, before the boy left the screen, he lifted his hand and weakly waved at the remaining students, many of whom waved back. So for the moment, at least, he seemed to be in surprisingly decent shape.

Well … _physically_, that is.

_Aizawa for a homeroom teacher_, All Might mused in consternation. _No two ways about it, young Harry: You're going to be in for one hell of a tough time. That hospital bed will likely seem like a trip to the spa compared to what you have in store for you this year._

He chuckled in commiseration. _You poor, poor bastard_.

* * *

**Author's note:** Told you guys you'd get the next chapter soon! I hope you like it, and I'm eager to hear your thoughts! :)

On that note, however, I was curious if I could also get some more specific feedback from you guys, if you're up to it. You see, by far, the most consistent critique I've gotten across all of my writing is that people feel my pacing tends to run a bit too slow. This is kinda vague, though, so I've broken this down to mean that some people feel that I'm either being too descriptive with scenes and events, and thus making them take longer to run through, or that I'm just putting too much content into them, and that they feel I'd benefit from having less _stuff_ in the scenes and plot so things would run through to their conclusion more quickly. So, that said, what did you think of this chapter? Did you think its pacing felt too slow? Did you feel I was being too descriptive, or that there was too much content in it? I'm very curious to hear what you think, because the consistency with which I've gotten the pacing criticism says there's probably something to it, and so I'm trying to work on improving in this area. However, your help will make this much easier to accomplish :)

Anyways, I hope you're enjoying the story, and another shout-out to my newly married sister, who's just being all kinds of adult out there!

Seriously, I don't know where I went wrong with her ;)


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter ****4**** – ****The Year of the ****Very ****Grumpy Caterpillar**

…

Time seemed slow and heavy following that fateful exam at UA as Harry waited, patiently, anxiously, to receive the letter that would set the path of his new future, finally redeeming all the sweat and blood he had given to reach it.

And day after day, he waited in vain.

A year passed. Winter changed into spring. Spring changed into summer. Summer changed back into winter. And winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn.

At least, that's how it felt to the increasingly restless teenager stuck waiting on a letter that simply _would not arrive!_ In fact, he found himself wondering if the school had somehow contracted the delivery out to Errol, the Weasley's geriatric old owl who had been infamous for two things: occasionally taking six months to deliver a letter only two blocks away, and baffling scientists and birdwatchers everywhere as they tried to comprehend exactly how such a blind, moldy old bag of crumpled feathers had still been capable of flight in the first place.

But at last, one day, an entire _lifetime_ after the madness of the practical exam (or maybe just a few weeks; he couldn't quite tell), the letter finally arrived.

As Harry sat there, holding a heavy envelope bearing the school's logo pressed deeply into a brilliant red wax seal, he found himself remembering another letter just like it that he had received long ago.

That letter had set him on the path that would define his life for so long, opening him to a world he didn't understand, a legacy he could never escape, and a prophecy he was doomed to fulfill.

Looking back, he sometimes wondered if he would have opened that letter if he had known the fate it had in store for him.

He showed no such hesitation here. Grinning with eagerness, he broke the letter's seal and dumped out the contents without a moment's pause.

After all, unlike his first Hogwarts letter, this one marked a path he had chosen for himself, not had chosen for him by Seers or old wizards or snake-faced murderers with delusions of grandeur.

And he couldn't _wait_ to learn how his first steps on his new path had gone!

However, as a heavy silver disk rolled out onto the table in front of him, and the air above it suddenly lit up with the light of a holographic projection, excitement and eagerness promptly faded from his mind, replaced by another, rather different emotion.

"**BOOYAH! I am here as a projection now, ready to tell you the scores of your exam!"** All Might's beaming face shouted from the hologram in front of the slack-jawed teenager. **"Surprised, are you? You see, I didn't come to this city just to fight villains. You are looking at the newest UA faculty member!"**

At this point, Harry's eye began a very slight twitch. And it only grew worse as the video continued playing, and a holographic All Might wearing a mustard-yellow pinstripe suit explained how the exam awarded students with both "villain points" for destroying robots and "rescue points" for heroic actions, decided by a panel of judges who had been watching the test play out, and guess which brand new UA faculty member had been on that panel?

By the time the screen showed Harry's score, his eye was stuck in practically a rapid-fire wink as he finally, after _weeks_ of waiting, learned that he had indeed passed the exam and was now a member of UA High. At that point, though, he barely even registered the hologram listing the candidates with the top ten scores from the exam, many with unusually high scores in rescue points, just as he only distantly noticed holo-Might talking about the zero-pointer and using words like "inspiration" and "heroism" and "teamwork" as he praised both him and his new classmates for their actions in the test.

Frankly, Harry had more important matters on his mind just then.

"_Seriously, Toshinori?!"_ a furious Harry shouted as the hologram finally closed. "_I've been biting my nails for _weeks_ over whether I passed or not, and you've known this entire time?!"_

At the quiet thump of footsteps behind him, Harry turned to direct his glare at the decidedly scrawnier All Might standing just outside his room.

"Well, it would have been unfair of me to tell you your score when everyone else had to wait until now to learn theirs," a snickering Toshinori replied, his sunken blue eyes glimmering with mirth. "You wouldn't want me to abuse my position as a teacher like that, would you? Because that certainly wouldn't be very plus ultra of you!"

Harry's glare was unappeased. "And you never mentioned you'd be one of my teachers at UA becaaauuuse …" the irritated teen prompted.

"I guess it must have slipped my mind," Toshinori responded airily, all while his face proclaimed that butter would not melt in his mouth. "I just have so much on my mind these days, you see. You can't expect me to remember to share _everything_, can you?"

Harry practically bristled with indignation. "I'm living in your freaking apartment!" he cried. "You see me every day! For crying out loud, I'm usually the one who drags you out of bed in the morning!"

"Yeah, well, what can you do," Toshinori replied with a flippant shrug, not even bothering to hide his snickering at the teen's agitation.

Harry's eyes narrowed before his features suddenly softened into an almost genial expression. "Wow. I really have to hand it to you, Toshi. I knew you were strong, but I never quite realized just how brave you are, too."

Toshinori's snickering stopped dead. "Is that so?" he asked in an overly casual tone that his worried eyes undercut rather heavily. "And … what exactly prompted this little revelation of yours?"

"Hmm? Oh, it's nothing," Harry replied distractedly as he cleared the desk in front of him. "It's just that not many people would be so willing to mess with someone who has such easy access to the place where they sleep," he breezily explained. "… or to their clothes … or hair products …" He had an almost admiring look on his face as he finally turned back to All Might. "You have some serious guts!"

"… Well … thank you, young Harry. It's … always good to be appreciated," Toshinori responded, his fixed smile seeming more than a little uneasy. "Speaking of being appreciated, why don't I make you breakfast tomorrow? With all your favorites in it! After all, you should probably be having a good hearty breakfast before your appointments with Recovery Girl," Toshinori suggested in what was absolutely not an attempt at bribery, no matter the uneasy tone in his voice or the wary shift in his step as he took in how his rather peeved and creative house-guest was eyeing him.

"Oh, that's alright, Toshinori. You don't need to go to any trouble on my behalf," the selfless Harry shrugged off with a toothy, only slightly malicious grin. "Besides, I doubt a 'hearty breakfast' is going to be making much difference now, after enduring that woman's bloody treatments every day for the past few weeks straight."

At this point, he expression turned more annoyed than anything as he plucked irritably at one of the residual bandages encircling his right forearm. It had been there since he had utterly _trashed_ his body in the zero-pointer fight and been taken to UA's healer Recovery Girl for the first of many treatments, though at least she had removed enough of the other bandages by now that he no longer looked like a reject mummy.

He felt like it would have made a bad first impression to still be wearing those when classes finally started next week, and he had had quite enough pointing and muttering from classmates in the past, thank you very much. He could definitely do without that here at UA. But at least he wasn't coming into this school with some nonsensical fame over his head. Nope! This time, he had a clean slate! No fame, no grudges, no rumors, and no enemies!

Of course, he didn't exactly plan on keeping his newfound anonymity for long. After all, he needed to make a name for himself if he wanted to have any shot of filling All Might's nearly Hagrid-sized shoes and taking his place as this world's new Symbol of Peace.

However, that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy that anonymity for as long as he possibly could. And as he sat back with a relaxed smile, already planning prank-filled vengeance on the nervously shifting Toshinori still lurking anxiously in his doorway, he intended to enjoy this peace and quiet very, very much indeed.

* * *

**All of five seconds later**

Harry wasn't the only new student to receive his acceptance letter that evening. And he also wasn't the only one to stare open-mouthed at the we're-too-cool-for-simple-paper holographic presentation it featured. In fact, many did, though mostly out of shock at the reveal that All Might, number one hero in the world, and unanimous idol to virtually every single prospective student of UA, would be one of their teachers this year.

However, in one home in particular, a certain new student's shock was almost completely unrelated to this Mighty reveal.

"… tenth place …" a disbelieving whisper echoed throughout the dingy room as wide, crimson eyes fixed unwaveringly on the list of top ten scores from the practical exam.

Rather than topping the list, as anticipated, the name Bakugo was placed squarely at the bottom.

This surprise was actually fairly warranted. In a typical year, the explosive teen's exorbitant score in villain points would have earned one of the top spots rather easily, even without a single rescue point to supplement them.

This year, however, had featured an unprecedented distribution of rescue points thanks to events in Battle Center C, placing names such as Ashido, Kendo, Tokoyami, and Tsunotori well above Bakugo's name, even with dramatically lower scores in villain points. Even Jiro, with only 32 villain points, was placed in ninth place thanks to her score of 46 rescue points, narrowly beating Bakugo's score of 77 villain points. Meanwhile, names like Shiozaki and Kirishima took fourth and third place with even higher villain and rescue point scores, while Usagiyama, with just as many villain points as Bakugo, but a generous helping of rescue points on top of them, easily took second, vastly outstripping the ashen-haired teen.

And there, at the top of the list …

Those crimson eyes widened even further in shocked recognition.

'_My name is Harry Potter.'_

His words seemed to echo through the room as Bakugo's mind flashed back to that day in the alley, and that disgusting sludge villain.

The feeling of being slowly swallowed up by that living puddle of slime still made Bakugo's skin crawl, but it had nothing on that smothering feeling of shame at having to have been rescued, which even now made sparks ignite in furiously clenched palms as the feeling welled up inside like bile.

But that green-eyed bastard who came charging in when all the "real" heroes were running scared …

'_I don't have any powers.'_

Explosions began rippling even more furiously throughout the now trembling fists.

_Was it all just some joke?_ Bakugo thought, teeth grinding as red eyes stared at that damned name ranked as first. _Bad enough that little bastard looked at me like … like … like some helpless _THING_ that needed rescuing! Like I was too weak to help MYSELF!_

Lips now lifted in a snarl as plumes of smoke drifted up from the spasming fists, still twitching as one explosion after another tried desperately to escape and destroy everything in sight.

_But now this?!_ Bakugo's eyes narrowed. _That bastard had a quirk all along! No way he got to first place with _that score_ without one! So was he just tricking everyone that day? Pretending he didn't have a quirk?_

Breaths started coming faster and faster as the explosive teen nearly hyperventilated, furious eyes staring through a red haze at _that name!_

_Was he just trying to show me up?! Proving he could take that slimy fucker down even without using his power, when I couldn't stop it with all of mine?!_

_DOES HE THINK HE'S THAT MUCH BETTER THAN ME?!_

… _Is he?_

With a roar, the dam finally broke. Like thunder in a bottle, the room groaned and shook as deafening explosions utterly decimated the desk and that damned holographic projector. The nearly rabid teen was soon left snarling in front of a pile of smoking wreckage, the list and everything around it nothing but ash drifting through the air like snow. However, those rage-filled eyes simply stared through it all, as if their crimson irises could pierce the walls and miles shielding their soon-to-be victim.

"HARRY POTTER! YOU ARE SO FUCKING DEAD!"

* * *

On the other side of town, Harry Potter's finely tuned someone-is-cursing-my-name-and-wishing-me-dead senses started tingling, prompting him to release a bone-weary sigh.

"Well … it was fun while it lasted," he lamented, solemnly grieving the rather sudden death of peaceful anonymity as he rubbed the age-old scar on his forehead.

* * *

Days later, in a bleak, almost lightless room buried deep underground, pale lips stretched in a gruesome smile.

"So … he's at UA."

With a faint smack, a heavy newspaper was laid on a table, its headline boldly declaring the abrupt career change of All Might, number one hero in the world, now assuming the role of hero course instructor at UA High. The picture accompanying the article showcased the boisterous hero in all his powerful glory as he posed for the camera in front of the famed hero academy, muscles bulging with strength as his beaming grin comforted the innocent and terrified the wicked in equal measure.

Nearby, an older newspaper presented a rather different image of the invulnerable "Symbol of Peace." Not knowingly, of course. In fact, this article did not even mention the famed hero, instead discussing the vicious attack of a "sludge villain" repelled not by pro heroes, but by a simple pair of teenagers. The picture in question showed these teens sprawling with exhaustion in the midst of a still smoldering alley, surrounded by concerned heroes and the scattered remnants of the slimy villain. But there in the background, cloaked in anonymity amongst a crowd of gawking bystanders, stood an emaciated man with scraggly golden hair. A man few would recognize as he was, sickly and weak, but which his own eye could _never_ miss.

All Might. Mighty no more.

"It seems your attack was successful after all, sir," a balding man commented, eyes locked on the syringe in his hand as he filled it from a bottle filled with an unknown concoction. However, for all the man's dutiful focus on his given task, he was more than astute enough to know what his master was referring to, having pored over the same articles as him. "He may have survived, but the injury appears to have ruined his body's ability to contain his power. He's crippled."

Those pale lips widened further in satisfaction at the doctor's astute observation. "And for all his efforts, the whole world has begun to notice," he reveled, having noted in delight as rumors began spreading about the number one hero's increasing absence from hero work. Where once, All Might had been renowned for his zeal, flitting from crime to catastrophe all hours of the day and night, now it seemed rare to catch more than one or two fleeting sightings of the "Symbol of Peace" in a day.

If not less.

"He probably hopes to use teaching as a cover for how little he can use his power nowadays," the doctor reasoned, gently flicking the filled syringe to free the air bubbles trapped inside.

"Oh, more than that," the man's master replied, scarred fingers gently tracing the older article's unknowing photo of the half-dead hero before trailing towards the announcement of his enemy's new vocation. "He's looking for a successor to pass his power on to."

Approaching the man's chair, the doctor paused. "Are you planning on attacking him there, sir?" he asked in muted concern, watching as those burned, twisted fingers continued tracing the picture of the school for burgeoning young heroes, where his master's nemesis could now be found. "Because I'm afraid we still have a long ways to go to help you recover from your own injuries."

This statement could easily be considered for Understatement of the Century as the doctor carefully injected the syringe in his hand into one of the dozens of tubes trailing from his master's back like roots from a tree. Each one terminated in a convoluted array of machinery providing complex readouts and delicately regulating the myriad of concoctions they pumped into the man to help restore his devastated body.

Designed by the doctor himself, these drugs and contraptions were leagues beyond anything the modern medicine community had to offer, hamstrung as they were by laws and budgets and their inane insistence on what they considered "ethical testing".

Freed as he was from their nonsensical restrictions, and with all he had learned from his master, he had made advances his former colleagues could never even _dream _of!

But even still, his best efforts could do little more than keep his master alive under the horrendous injuries scarring nearly every square inch of the man's skin, to say nothing of how they had ravaged his insides.

There was a reason All Might's smile was so terrifying to villains, after all.

"Sadly, it seems I must remain hands-off for the forseeable future," his master admitted reluctantly. "But that's alright for now." Those pale fingers began tightening, slowly but relentlessly crumpling the article, and its picture of the grinning buffoon. "After all, there may be nothing more satisfying than killing a man with your own two hands … but there's still something to be said for having others do it for you."

The doctor raised an eyebrow at that. "You really think they can pull that off?" he asked, somewhat doubtfully. "_Kill_ the Symbol of Peace?"

The tubes clattered against each other as his master gave a slight shrug of apathy. "Maybe. Maybe not," he admitted, fingers dropping the crumbled, shredded article before gently trailing towards the other, older article. "But what better way to test my would-be successor than to have them try?" His smile returned, toothy and cruel. "Besides," he whispered, "there's more than one way to destroy a man."

This time, his scarred fingers ignored the delightful image of the broken All Might, lurking powerless amongst the crowd like some common bystander. Instead, he traced the subject of the defeated man's unusually rapt attention in the photograph:

A black-haired teen with a scar on his forehead.

Once more, those fingers tightened.

* * *

"**Alright, first day! You excited?!"**

"Yes, All Might," Harry's exceedingly flat voice responded.

"**You sure you have everything? Book bag? Notebook? Extra pens?"**

"Yes, All Might," Harry answered in the exact same tone, just as he had the last twelve times the excitable Symbol of Peace had asked.

"**And you brought your security badge?"**

"No. That's why the school's security system opened fire when I stepped inside the gate. I'm a ghost now. Very tragic."

"**Now, you want to make a good impression on your classmates!"** All Mother continued, utterly oblivious to the teen's facetiousness as he straightened the boy's tie and smoothed his lapels, an act roughly on par with being beaten by bludgers, given the man's insane super-strength and extreme over-exuberance. **"So smile, introduce yourself, shake their hands …"**

"You know, I perfected my friend-making system when I was a year old. I find a whale-sized child, move into his home, and for the next decade, I have a standing invite to join him and his gang in riveting matches of a game we call 'Harry Hunting'. Good times. Never fails."

"**Oh, your hair's messy! You don't want to meet everyone looking like that!"**

"Don't you have a class to teach?!" Harry begged, desperately fending off an All Might apparently possessed by Molly Weasley's spirit as the man tried straightening his hair with hands the size of trashcan lids.

"**Sorry! Sorry!"** The towering mother hen backed off. **"It's just … my protege, about to take his first hero class! I'm so excited!"**

Harry glared weakly up at him through freshly smoothed bangs. "I hadn't noticed," he remarked dryly. "But at this rate, we're both going to end up missing our first classes."

"**Oh, geez, you're right!"** the walking mass of muscles exclaimed, taking note of the decidedly empty school hallway they were currently standing in, everyone else already in their classrooms. **"The fledgling Symbol of Peace can't be late for his first day! You need to hurry off to class!"** All Might scolded the teen, as if he was the reason for their imminent tardiness and not the hulking superhero currently shifting into an almost exaggerated runner's stance. **"I'll see you later, young Harry, and good luck in homeroom!"**

With that, the hallway was struck with gale-force wind as the over seven-foot speedster vanished between one blink and the next, staggering Harry as he struggled to keep his feet under the jet-turbine-like forces. Bemused, Harry down the empty hallway as the newly created wind tunnel thoroughly undid all of the man's efforts to tidy his appearance. Smiling softly, Harry did his best to smooth his newly crumpled blazer, flapping tie, and absolutely wild hair as he continued heading to his homeroom class.

He gave Toshinori a hard time for it, but … to tell the truth, it felt rather nice to be fussed over like the man was fond of doing.

It made him feel like part of a family.

Of course, he'd _never_ admit it to the man, though.

After a bit more walking, though, he found himself dragged out of these thoughts as he reached a door marked "1-A".

A door nearly fifteen feet tall.

Blinking, Harry suddenly envisioned a class full of Hagrids squeezed into tiny desks as they wrote with pencils that looked like toothpicks in their hands.

_Well, that'd certainly be better than sharing a classroom with Malfoy or Snape_, he acknowledged with a grin as he once more cherished his freedom from those two … "people". _And hey! Maybe I'll even be able to get away from the constant murder attempts in school now!_

"YOU!"

As Harry spun to face the source of the shout, a thunderous explosion made his ears ring as a human-shaped blur blasted towards him, grabbing him by his shirt and slamming him back against the door. "YOU'RE DEAD!"

_Or not._

"Am I?" he asked, blinking stars out of his eyes. "Well, then, you probably want to send out a bulletin or something. There's some people who have a lot of celebrating to do."

With one last head shake, he finally got a good look at his attacker. Spiky ash-blonde hair practically seemed to bristle with rage, and deep crimson irises perfectly suited the fury that filled them, as did the flaring nostrils and acrid smell of smoke.

All these things triggered flashes of familiarity, but it was that snarling voice threatening death and violence …

"Wait a minute, it's you!" he finally realized. "The girl from the alley!"

Impressively, the girl's snarl seemed to grow even more feral at these words. "How'd you beat my score?!" she demanded, twisting his shirt even tighter in her grip.

"Um … what?" he asked, completely at a loss.

"Don't play dumb with me!" she shouted, apparently growing even more infuriated, hard as that was to believe. "The exam! I was supposed to come in first place! But instead, _you_ did! How?!"

He blinked at her. "I came in first?" he asked in genuine surprise, only now realizing he had forgotten to check what his actual score was, having been just a tad bit distracted by the revelation about Toshinori, as well as his plans for vengeance against the man. "Huh. How about that?" he commented with a pleased smile. "Well, if I had to guess how, I'd say that I probably earned more points than you. That's just a hunch, though."

He could actually _hear _her teeth grinding at his response. "You said in the alley that you didn't have any powers," she hissed through her clenched teeth. "And you didn't use any, either! So, what, were you just trying to show off?! Prove you could fight that thing without them?! Make yourself look better when The-Boy-Without-Powers comes in first in the exam?!"

By now, a vein had begun throbbing in her temple, leaving him genuinely worried she was about to have an aneurysm.

Of course, the stuff she was ranting started making him wonder if she had already had one.

"Yeeesss," he slowly enunciated. "I risked my life to fight that monster without any powers just to impress some girl I had never even met. Because I am just _that_ bloody desperate."

The trails of smoke rising from her palms said she did not find his response particularly calming.

"Why'd you say you didn't have any powers?" she growled, her narrowed eyes reminding him of Lupin's as a werewolf.

"Because I didn't," he replied honestly. "Not then, anyway. I got powers since then."

"_Bullshit!_" she barked, eyes widening in disbelief that he'd even try to claim something so ridiculous. "How stupid do you think I am?! You really expect me to believe that load of garbage?!"

"I don't really give a damn what you believe," Harry retorted evenly, making her head jerk back a bit in surprise. He didn't really care, though. He was about through playing nice with this girl holding him against a bloody wall. "I don't know you. I don't lie awake at night obsessing over what you think of me, and I'm not so paranoid that I think that everything everyone does is some kind of plot to show me up."

With that, he reached up and grabbed her wrists, gently but firmly pulling her hands free of his shirt, the merest trickles of One for All flowing through his muscles enough to completely ignore her own attempts to stop him. He watched her eyes widen further as she tugged at her arms, achieving as much as if her wrists were held tight by a stone statue. As her eyes turned back to his, smoke once more began rising from her fists.

"I don't know what the hell you're up to, but it won't matter," she snarled. "I'm going to rise to the top, and I'll blow away _anyone_ who gets in my way!" As she made one more furious tug at her hands, he finally let go. "So just stay the hell out of my way if you know what's good for you!" she continued. "There can only be one top hero in the world, and I'm going to make damn sure it's me! Not you, not our classmates, not even All Might! _Me_!"

"Knock yourself out," he mildly replied, straightening his shirt for the third time in as many minutes, though at this point, it looked like it had been beaten with rocks, so his efforts seemed pretty pointless.

"You think I can't?!" she demanded, almost seeming offended as his casual response. "You think I don't stand a chance against you, is that it?!"

"Oh, for God's sake!" he finally snapped. "What part of 'I don't give a damn' are you not getting?! I don't _care_ if you're better than me! I don't care if you're more powerful than me! I don't even care if you beat me and become the best hero!" She looked poleaxed at that response, but he wasn't done. "Unlike you, I didn't come here as some kind of pissing match between myself and the whole damn planet! I didn't come here to prove I'm better than anyone! I came here to make myself better than the person I've been so I have a shot at helping make the world a better place. End of story. I'm not here for you. So if you're looking for someone to prove yourself against, look elsewhere. I've already spent five years playing along with this other idiot desperate to validate himself by trodding all over me and my friends. I'm not interested in a repeat performance. But just as a suggestion, you might want to try focusing less on other people and more on yourself."

And here, he had thought she looked poleaxed _before_. He was wrong. "Instead of obsessing over who might be better than you, or desperately trying to make sure no one is in your way, try surpassing yourself instead. I've learned the hard way that a person is their own greatest rival, and their greatest obstacle." Well, technically Voldemort learned that lesson the hard way, obsessing over any potential rival he might have to the point of creating his worst fear and orchestrating his own downfall. But the point remained.

"If you keep trying to get better than your past self, you'll rise as high as you possibly can. If all you ever focus on is what everyone else can do, you'll be so busy chasing after them that you'll never get farther than second place." He finally gave up trying to smooth the mass of wrinkles formerly known as his shirt to look back at the speechless girl. "Good luck."

With that, he turned back to the class door, only for it to slide open before he could even touch it.

"Man, what is going on out here? What's with all the shouting?" a rather familiar-looking pink-skinned girl asked, poking her head curiously into the hallway, only to freeze as her eyes met his. "YOU!"

"So I hear," he bemusedly replied, only to have the wind knocked out of him as she suddenly tacked him in a violent hug nearly on par with the blonde girl's assault.

"You're okay!" she shouted delightedly, squeezing her arms around him even tighter.

"Relatively," he groaned, hearing his ribs creak under the pressure.

"Ashido, who are you talking to?" a familiar voice called out from the classroom.

"It's Potter, Jiro!" she shouted back delightedly, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him into the classroom in a fairly surprising display of strength, given that she was nearly a head shorter than he was.

"You know, I'm pretty sure he's capable of walking, Ashido," that same wry voice commented as he was pulled into a neatly arranged classroom. Spotting the voice's source in the second row, he now realized it was coming from the girl with earphone jacks dangling from her earlobes, one of which she was idly twirling around her fingertip as she rested her chin on her palm. Looking more closely, he also realized that her hair wasn't black like he had thought. Instead, it was a deep purple, and as she shifted her head, the streaks of reflected light made it almost look like soundwaves were patterned into her hair.

And, as he glanced at the rest of his classmates, he soon realized that she looked decidedly normal compared to some of the other students.

"Alright, you're back!" a boisterous voice shouted next to Harry as a dark-skinned, muscular arm was thrown across his shoulders. Turning, his eyes were immediately pulled not to the wide, cocky grin or piercing red eyes, but to the pair of tall, happily twitching white rabbit ears on top of the girl's head. "Here I was worried you'd be stuck in a hospital or something for the first half of the year! My last name's Usagiyama, but with all the ass you kicked in the exam, you can call me Rumi!"

With effort, he finally tore his eyes off her large rabbit ears and long, equally white hair to try and respond.

"Errr …"

"Hi! Glad okay!" another nearby girl called out brokenly. Turning once again, he recognized the blonde girl with horse hooves for feet and tall horns on her head. This time, though, he also noticed her almost uncannily large, doe-like blue eyes and round face that gave her a look of guileless innocence. "I'm Pony!"

"Hi-"

"Wait, _are _you okay? The last time we saw you, you looked like you were half dead! How'd you heal so fast?" the excitable pink girl next to him asked in concern. Looking at her, he blinked in surprise as he noticed that the whites of her eyes were jet black, while her irises were a polished amber. Rather than make her look intimidating, though, as might be expected, it somehow made her look even more adorable, as did her fluffy pink hair, which he also now noticed was home to a pair of small, crooked horns.

"Yes, I'm-"

"Popular one, ain'tcha?" yet another voice sounded in his ear. This time, though, he jumped nearly a foot as he saw not another classmate standing next to him, but instead just a mouth and chin floating in the air next to his ear. "Aww, no scream? Not even a squeal? Lame." Pouting, the mouth blew a raspberry at him before floating towards a girl with wavy green hair sitting near the back of the class. As her mouth rejoined with her face, she flashed him a sharp-toothed, teasing grin.

"Tokage, try and hold yourself together, would you? Giving your classmates a heart attack isn't exactly the best first impression," a girl with red hair pulled into a side ponytail scolded her tiredly from the front row before flashing him a weary, apologetic smile. "Sorry about her. I'm Kendo, in case you forgot. Good to see you up and about."

"Yeah, what she said! I was worried about ya', man!" the equally red-haired Kirishima called out from the middle of the class with a cheery wave.

By this point, though, Harry's powers of speech were pretty much failing him, overwhelmed as he was by … well … _everything_.

A feeling not helped by the repeated uses of his name he kept hearing throughout the class as students he didn't recognize from the exam apparently asked students he _did _recognize exactly why everyone seemed to know him. Given the wide, amazed eyes that kept turning back towards him and the others, he guessed they were being given a somewhat glorified account of their desperate play against the zero-pointer.

With how the blonde-haired girl with the explosive quirk roughly shoulder-checked him as she stalked towards her desk, though, he guessed that not everyone was particularly thrilled by these stories.

_You know, maybe I should have listened to All Might's guide about first impressions after all_, he pondered, struggling to get back on balance enough to finally stop just standing there like a statue.

Taking a deep breath, he finally started speaking. "Good to meet all-"

"If you're just here to make friends, you can go ahead and leave right now."

For some reason, that simple, tired voice cut through all the chatter in the classroom and left everyone dead silent.

Turning, Harry's confused eyes spotted only an empty doorway behind him where the voice had come from, only to slowly lower to the floor to spot …

"Is that a sleeping bag?" Rumi asked for him, her tall rabbit ears almost frozen in astonished confusion.

Sure enough, it was indeed a large, squashy-looking sleeping bag lying on the floor just outside the classroom door. More interestingly than that, however, was the fact that it was currently occupied.

"Asking questions you already know the answer to is a sign of irrationality," a tired, unshaved face responded, the only visible part of the man not cocooned inside the sleeping bag. "Welcome to UA's hero course. I'm Shota Aizawa, your teacher," the bored-sounding man announced as he unzipped the bag from the inside, giving them all a better look at their new homeroom teacher.

Shrouding the man from chin to chest was a massive, coiling scarf made of some strange gray material Harry couldn't place. However, standing in stark contrast to the sheer mass of cloth draped across his shoulders, the man's body was actually almost beanpole thin, accentuated by the baggy, plain-black clothing he wore.

Of greater concern to Harry, though, was the man's long, greasy black hair that hung to his shoulders. Combined with the heavy bags under the man's eyes, giving them what looked like a perpetual glare of irritability …

_Well, that settles it,_ Harry decided. _I'm dead, and this is hell_.

This seemed the only logical explanation for how he could be finding himself with a reincarnated Severus Snape for a teacher.

Desperate to distract himself from his role as fate's hacky sack, though, he looked past the man rolling up his sleeping bag to take note of the long, empty hallway behind him.

_Ooookay. Option one: he walked here with his sleeping bag, then curled up inside it for all of twenty seconds before it was time for class_, Harry theorized. _Option two: he got some other teacher to drag him in his sleeping bag to our classroom door._ Here, Harry desperately fought down a bubbling laugh.

_Or, option three: he inched all the way to our class inside his sleeping bag like a caterpillar._

At that, he couldn't hold it in any longer.

In that dead-silent classroom, his bark of laughter rang like a crystal bell, drawing all eyes immediately to him, including the bloodshot eyes of his teacher.

"Something you'd like to share?" the exhausted man asked him in a tone that was somehow both acidic and utterly flat. However, his irritable expression soon changed to one of recognition.

A change that did not comfort Harry in the slightest.

"Ah, yes," he said softly, "Harry Potter." His bloodshot eyes drifted across the rest of the class, most of whom had just ceased gossiping about the zero-pointer battle, and his own role within it. "Our … new … _celebrity._"

A horror-struck Harry began internally screaming.

"Nothing to share after all?" the teacher asked flatly. "In that case, everyone, put on your gym uniforms and head outside." Even shrouded by fatigue, those dark eyes pierced Harry's own. "I have a test for you to take."

The man's lips quirked in a small, unkind smile.

Harry sighed tiredly. _Well, it just wouldn't be a proper school year without a teacher who hated my guts,_ he noted with a wry headshake as he and his muttering classmates followed the teacher's unexpected orders. _Now to see if he'll be the teacher who tries to kill me this year. It's tradition, after all._

* * *

"A quirk assessment test?" his astonished classmates echoed in almost perfect unison, now standing outside dressed in matching blue-and-white jumpsuits.

"That's right," the still bored-sounding teacher replied. "You need a concrete grasp of your abilities and your limits if you want to learn how to improve them. A measurable test is the most rational way to accomplish this."

"But … sir, what about orientation?" a student tentatively asked from the crowd, apparently aware that their class was supposed to be joining the rest of the school for a welcoming assembly right about now.

"What about it?" Mr. Aizawa asked, unimpressed. "It's nothing more than a pointless ceremony. Is that really how you want to spend your time?"

As no one answered, Mr. Aizawa turned from the testing grounds to face them all. "Let me make something clear to you: I'm not here to babysit children; I'm here to train heroes. As for you, you only have three years to learn all that it takes to be a pro." His exhausted eyes turned almost pitying. "To be frank, that's nowhere near enough time. Not by half. But, that's the system that's in place, so that's what we have to work with, irrational though it may be." Here, his lips quirked in a small smile, but not a kind one. "Thankfully, though, we're not tethered to tradition here at UA, which means I can run my class as I see fit. So if that means skipping useless wastes of time like orientation, then that's what's going to happen. If anyone doesn't like it, you can go ahead and pack up your things, because I promise you, it isn't going to get any easier."

No one moved to follow his advice.

"Still here?" he asked after a moment. "Good. In that case …" Harry's hand snapped up to catch a softball as the teacher lobbed it at him. "Potter. You got the top score in the entrance exam. Stand in the circle and throw this as far as you can. Use your quirk."

Given the sound of grinding teeth he heard behind him, Harry guessed that the blonde girl with the explosive quirk didn't care for the reminder about his ranking in the test. But he didn't bother looking back as he headed to the circle the teacher indicated. Hefting the ball, he realized it had machinery of some kind built into it, likely to let them measure how far it was thrown.

_I hope they made this thing sturdy_, he reflected as he sent the crackling green power of One for All racing through his muscles, bracing his body with the shield of glittering white energy at the same time. Focusing the power largely in his chest and arm, he took his position and cocked back his arm, feeling his muscles creak as they were supercharged.

The field echoed with a thunderous boom and a torrent of gale-force wind as he sent the ball hurtling across the sky faster than the eye could see. Of course, not many eyes were on it in the first place, given how everyone was bracing themselves against the staggering wind and shielding their eyes from the sudden dust storm it created.

After a few seconds, the violently displaced air finally settled, leaving most of his classmates muttering to each other as they peered at the horizon in a fruitless effort to see where the ball went.

As for Harry, his trained seeker's eyes easily tracked the faint glimmer of sunlight reflecting off the machinery built into the ball as it arced towards the ground far in the distance.

Hearing a faint beep from the device in Mr. Aizawa's hand, everyone turned to their teacher, who wordlessly turned the device to show them all its display.

"Damn! 1,200 meters?" Rumi exclaimed, her loud voice effortlessly cutting through the astonished chatter of their classmates. "You don't mess around, do you?"

Her excited grin said she was more eager than ever to take her own shot at the test.

"Heck yeah! Now this is what I'm talking about!" Kirishima yelled, grinning from ear to ear. "We finally get to use our quirks as much as we want! This is awesome!"

"You think this is a game, do you?" Aizawa asked quietly.

Once more, the entire class fell silent at his voice.

"I see I failed to impress on you just how serious this training would be," Aizawa continued, bloodshot eyes piercing them all. "Did you think your classes here would be all about fun and games? Or perhaps that being a pro hero would be? It's not. In fact, let me share an inside secret with you all." Once more, a small, unpleasant smile spread across his lips. "A hero's life sucks."

By the look on most of his classmates' faces, Harry guessed that they considered these words nothing less than blasphemy.

He did not. He knew better.

"A hero's life is hard," Aizawa continued, still brutally honest. "It's painful. It's full of suffering and death, and little appreciation, if any. It's not fun. It's not a game. And it's almost never fair." That small smile grew vicious. "Which is why one of you will be going home today."

A chorus of gasps rippled across the entire class, and this time, Harry joined them.

"You mean … one of us is going to be expelled?" a short, brown-haired girl asked tremulously.

Aizawa nodded.

"But … it's only our first day! You can't do that!" she cried, panic and denial welling in her eyes.

"Is that what you plan to tell a fire that just destroyed someone's home?" Aizawa asked, glittering black eyes absolutely pitiless. "Or a murderer that's just torn someone's family apart? 'You can't do this'?" He snorted. "That's not how a hero's life works. Crime, tragedy, natural disasters … they never make sense. They're never fair. And you don't get to just decide that they won't happen. As heroes, all we can ever do is respond, and try and pick up the pieces they leave behind." His eyes narrowed. "If you can't handle that, you have no business trying to live this type of life. Better to leave now before your denial gets somebody killed."

Stunned silence greeted this speech.

_Damn_, Harry thought as his teacher's eyes passed over his. _Harsh, but … he gets it_. As he clenched his fist, he felt the skin pull tight from the scars on the back of his palm, just as he felt a phantom ache in each of the many, _many_ other scars painting his body in a brutal legacy of just how unfair and utterly painful a hero's life could be.

_He really gets it_.

Reincarnation of Snape or not, Harry felt a budding respect take root as he listened to his new teacher.

"So may I assume that whomever comes in last in this test will be the one sent home?" a tall girl with a spiky black ponytail asked, raising her hand primly.

"I'm not sure," Aizawa answered, sweeping lanky black hair out of his eyes. "That would be a rational choice, but I'm not the one who will decide."

Everyone looked confused at that response.

"So … who will decide?" Ashido finally asked, pink-skinned face already wincing in fear of the answer.

Aizawa's small smile returned. "The person who comes in first."

Once more, stunned silence reigned.

"That's right," Aizawa confirmed. "One of you will be responsible for deciding which of your classmates will be expelled from UA High, likely destroying their dreams of being a pro hero for good."

Clearly, this was not a man who minced words.

"Now, if they choose rationally, they'll select one of two people," Aizawa explained, still visibly unconcerned. "Either they'll pick the student who came in last, who likely doesn't have enough potential to be a pro anyway … or they'll choose whoever came in second, who'll probably pose the biggest threat to their own chances of becoming the top hero." He shrugged apathetically. "But the choice is entirely up to them. So the only real way to be safe is to make sure _you_ take that top slot." His black eyes glittered darkly as they met Harry's. "Or else pray for mercy, and hope you haven't made any enemies who might want you gone."

Grimacing internally, Harry found his gaze drawn to the explosive girl with spiky blonde hair.

Her smile was as wide as it was vicious as she stared back at Harry.

_Lovely_, he thought with grimace of resignation. _Well … Plus Ultra, I guess._

He sighed tiredly.

* * *

Fifty-meter dash. Grip strength. Standing long jump. Repeated side steps. Ball throw. Distance run. Sit ups. Seated toe-touch.

Eight physical tests to determine who would progress in UA's hero course.

And who would be sent home for good.

Admittedly, Harry was a little unsure how tests like the seated toe-touch were supposed to prove anything about their power or their potential as heroes, but c'est la vie.

As the exam progressed, and he watched his classmates' efforts, he found himself feeling both impressed at his classmates' powers and amused at how they applied them to excel in the different tests.

In the ball throw, for instance, a short, brown-haired girl simply hefted the ball and gently lobbed it.

Harry's eyebrows rose higher and higher as the ball casually soared past the horizon.

"My quirk lets me make things weightless," she explained bashfully to the bug-eyed classmates staring at her.

_Well, that would explain it_, Harry thought with a chuckle as the teacher revealed her score of infinity for the test, the ball having drifted all the way into space.

But this had nothing on the shenanigans he saw in some of the other tests.

"Mr. Aizawa? Exactly how much of us has to cross the finish line?" the green-haired Tokage asked as she took her position for the fifty-meter dash, alongside the tall, black-haired boy with rectangular glasses that Harry remembered from before the practical exam. Harry blinked as he saw the boy's legs, though. With his pants rolled up at the knees, the boy's strangely large and angular calves were left exposed.

And sticking out of the back of them were what looked like short metal exhausts from an engine.

"Standard racing rules apply," the bored teacher answered her question. "So any part of you crossing the line counts."

Her sharp-toothed grin looked deviously delighted.

"Runners, on your marks!" the robotic start line called out, prompting the black-haired boy to shift into an experienced runner's stance. "Get set!"

A grinning Tokage twisted her body as if preparing for a kick.

"Go!"

Roaring with effort, the boy exploded into action, hot air rushing out the exhausts in his calves as his quirk, Engine, let him sprint faster and faster.

This test seemed to be the perfect match for the speedster.

"2.96 seconds!" the robotic finish line cheerily announced as a small, strange shape flew past the teen to cross the finish line moments before he did.

Sliding to a halt at a score of "3.04 seconds," Tenya Iida cast a flabbergasted look at his "opponent".

A severed, shoe-clad foot.

"So what do you think?" the rest of his now one-footed opponent called out to him, still back at the starting line. "'I really kicked your butt', or 'I guess I gave you the boot'? I can't decide which one I like best!"

As the foot came floating back to the laughing girl, the horrified speedster fell to his knees, apparently stricken with shame at having lost the one test his quirk was best suited for.

Despite feeling a bit queasy at watching her Lizard-Tail quirk in action, Harry simply snickered at the girl's very loose definition of "race."

She didn't seem alone in this, either. In the endurance run, the tall girl with the spiky black ponytail that he noticed earlier turned away from everyone and seemed to open her shirt, of all things, after which a strange, glittering pink glow seemed to originate from her stomach. Moments later, she was driving around the track on a solar-powered scooter that her quirk, Creation, let her conjure from the lipids in her own body.

Despite groaning and complaining from their classmates as this Momo Yaoyorozu surpassed all their scores in what they felt was a less than fair move, Harry simply laughed as the girl's quirk made him remember a time he watched a teacher transform her desk into a pig and back.

Only now, years later, after losing the ability himself, did he finally realize just how powerful transfiguration magic could truly be.

He wished he could tell McGonagall.

Of course, as Aizawa had so brutally predicted, the test wasn't all fun and games. In fact, as the exam went on, Harry increasingly noticed looks of anxiety and concern in his classmates' eyes.

On its own, this wouldn't be too surprising, given that they were taking a major exam on their first day. But the hesitant way they approached each test, and the way they kept eyeing each other uncertainly, showed that it wasn't just a fear of losing that was affecting them.

It was a fear of _winning_.

After all, whoever came in first would have to expel one of their own classmates, and as Aizawa said, this would also likely mean the end of that student's hope for becoming a pro hero.

This was a burden few seemed eager to take on.

"6.38 seconds!" a robotic assistant called out as a frog-like girl hopped across the finish line for the fifty-meter dash. But as she walked away, hands absently dry-washing each other, she showed neither pride in her score nor disappointment.

All she showed was uncertainty.

"Four-hundred kilograms!" another machine announced as a remarkably tall boy with three limbs extending from each shoulder finished the grip-strength test. Afterwards, though, despite his nose and mouth being shrouded behind a mask, the way he stared at his hands made his feelings clear.

Doubt. And regret.

However, not every student seemed to wrestle with these feeling of anxiety about winning, or uncertainty about whether they really tried their hardest.

"Later, losers!" Rumi laughed as her large rabbit's feet sent her hurtling across the sky, easily claiming one of the top scores for the standing long jump.

"DIE!" the spiky-haired blonde roared as she sent a ball rocketing across the sky chased by an explosion from her palm.

The way she glared at Harry said she wasn't talking to the ball.

As for Harry himself …

"And now it's time for the moment of truth," Aizawa announced after the last person completed the final test. "Time to see who won … and who's going home."

With a gentle, almost light-hearted beep, Aizawa's phone projected a list of twenty names, ranked from first to last.

Breathing deeply, Harry released a long, slow breath of acceptance as everyone around him started muttering worriedly.

"What?! Bullshit! I want a redo!" Bakugo shouted, muscles in her neck spasming as her disbelieving eyes took in her ranking.

"You don't get one," Aizawa answered boredly, clearly not moved by her reluctance to accept anything less than first place.

Even fifth.

"I guess it's up to you, Potter," Aizawa announced, closing the list and staring at the motionless teen. "So tell us, Mr. First Place: who's going home?"

All his classmates fell dead silent at this declaration.

Harry gave a slow, accepting nod.

It wasn't any surprise to him that he won. After all, his power was about as perfectly suited for all these tests as any single power could be. But it was more than that. He hadn't been one of those who approached each test with hesitation, reluctant to try his hardest for fear of having to expel one of his classmates.

Just the opposite, in fact.

He had never tried harder in a test in his life.

With a small, wistful smile, he imagined that somewhere, Hermione was shaking her head in pride and exasperation.

Dragging himself out of the past, Harry looked around at his present, and the array of potential heroes spread out before him.

They were as odd as they were incredible, even the ones like Bakugo. Their powers, their drive, their willingn– … no … their _eagerness_ to give themselves to a life as brutal and selfless as hero-work … it was truly amazing to him.

Unlike him, they didn't just constantly find themselves in situations that forced them to do what others would call heroic. They were seeking it out.

He had no doubt that each one of them could go on to do great things for this world.

Even the unpleasant blonde girl glaring murderously at him as if _daring_ him to expel her.

"Well, Number One? Who's it going to be?" Aizawa asked again, dark eyes fixed unwaveringly on his.

_All Might's gonna kill me_, Harry thought with gentle amusement as his back straightened. Meeting Aizawa's eyes evenly, he answered simply, and without any uncertainty whatsoever.

"Me."

* * *

_And there it is_, Aizawa noted with a tired head shake as he continued to meet the idiot boy's eyes, ignoring the gasps of shock coming from everyone else.

Except for the now bug-eyed young Bakugo, of course, who blessedly seemed to have lost the powers of speech at the boy's answer.

Unlike them, however, Aizawa was not surprised at all.

He had seen the footage of the zero-pointer nonsense. He knew what he was dealing with in this idiot.

"So that's it?" he asked the young moron in front of him, lips twisting in annoyance as the boy simply stood there calmly, clearly at peace with his pointless martyrdom. "Day one, and you're throwing in the towel? Walking away from being a hero just because you don't want to make the hard choice of sending someone else home?"

"I'm not walking away from anything," the boy answered. "I believe that everyone here is capable of doing a lot of good for this world, and they deserve a chance to make that happen. If I have the power to make sure they get it, why would I do anything else?" Here, his brow furrowed in confusion over those damn, resolute eyes. "Besides, isn't that what a hero would do?"

Once again, muttering spread across the class, only this time, it wasn't whispers of surprise.

It was _agreement_.

"You're not a hero," Aizawa said bluntly. "None of you are."

The whispers stopped dead.

"You're _students_," he continued, speaking to the entire class. "It's not your job to be selfless, or self-sacrificing. Not yet. It's your job to be _selfish_. To latch onto each and every scrap of knowledge and window of opportunity you can get your hands on, and _not let go_. That's the only way any of you have even the slightest chance of making it in this school, and becoming pro heroes." He tried to impress on them how crucial this was as he met each of his students' eyes. "You know how competitive today's hero world has become. So many people are scrambling to become heroes nowadays that only the absolute best of the best have any shot of being anything more than a glorified beat cop in a fancy costume."

His eyes turned back to young Potter's. "And each of you needs to remember that, at the end of the day, you're not teammates. You're not friends. Your classmates aren't helpless innocents for you to rescue. Their _rivals_. One person's success means another person's failure. That's just how the world works. Only one person can be the top hero, and that means making sure someone else is number two."

Once more, he swept his gaze across the rest of the class. "So let me ask you this: can each of you tell me, without a shadow of a doubt, that you truly gave it your all in this exam? Are you _absolutely sure_ that you didn't hold back, even a little, because you were afraid of having to expel one of your classmates?"

Some students met his gaze unflinchingly. Bakugo. Usagiyama. Yaoyorozu. Todoroki. Others. They were the ones who had accepted the harsh reality of competition, and their showing in this exam proved it.

It was no accident that they all held the top scores below Potter's.

But for the majority of the class, and especially those others involved in that zero-pointer nonsense, guilty eyes averted his gaze.

"That's what I thought," he continued, shaking his head with irritation. "That kind of attitude will ruin any chance you have of becoming a pro. So I suggest you all ask yourself why you're really here, and just how important that is to you." A smile spread across his lips. "Because if I catch any of you holding back again like you did today, someone _will_ be going home for real. So try and remember that you're here for _you_ and not your classmates, would you? Expulsions involve a _lot_ of paperwork, after all, and I'd hate to have to deal with that this early in the year."

As he turned and walked away, he heard students whispering in confusion at what he said, causing his smile to broaden.

"Wait … so am I not going home?" young Potter finally called after him.

"Of course not," he replied without turning around, a broad grin on his face. "That was just a logical deception I used to illustrate a point."

He laughed at the burst of outrage that rose from the entire class behind him, but he simply continued walking.

In his experience, harsh lessons left the deepest impressions, and whether they liked it or not, their little _display_ with the zero-pointer proved that this was a lesson they _desperately _needed to learn.

Young Potter in particular.

He wasn't here to train a bunch of martyrs; he was here to teach them all to be _heroes_.

Even aside from them tanking their chances to make it in this school, wannabe-martyrs who jump in front of every single bullet eventually end up as remarkably selfless corpses who are of no use whatsoever to the next person to find themselves at gunpoint. It may not be pretty, and it may not sound "heroic", but the simple fact was that heroes need to take care of themselves too if they want to survive long enough to actually manage to help others. The sooner these kids learned that, the better off they'd be.

It was simply rational.

His smile widened. _Of course, that doesn't mean I can't _enjoy_ teaching these blockheads that particular lesson_, he admitted to himself as the clamor of griping teenagers continued to rise behind him, making him laugh once again. _After all, a little schadenfreude never hurt anyone_.


End file.
